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Mt. Gox CEO Charged With Stealing $2.7 Million
An anonymous reader writes: After being arrested six weeks ago in Japan, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles has now been formally charged with the theft of $2.66 million worth of clients' money. "Tokyo-based MtGox shuttered last year after admitting 850,000 coins — worth around $480 million at the time, or $387 million at current exchange rates — had disappeared from its digital vaults. The exchange, which once said it handled around 80 percent of global Bitcoin transactions, filed for bankruptcy protection soon after the cyber-money went missing, leaving a trail of angry investors calling for answers." Karpeles still denies doing anything illegal. The case is proving difficult for Japanese authorities to unravel, and they're taking it as slowly as they legally can.
he could have applied for a gov bailout and used that to pay himself a bonus.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The freedom loving butt coin investors loathe government involvement; until of course somebody steal from them at which time they go crying for help.
The Japanese government should just wash its hands of the matter and ignore it as being of no concern.
And they know nothing at all about technology. There was a thing two (?) years ago where some mother's apartment dwelling otaku freak was cancelling Kurko's Basketball (a popular manga/anime) events left and right for over a year and they couldn't do a damn thing about it. Eventually the freak got so cocky he got careless and did things like using messenger cats. My memory's a little hazy, but it went on seemingly forever and the cops were completely helpless. And they're terrible with corporate crime like this (the handling of the Olympus affair was a disgrace) since usually it's all a matter of what Japanese politicians you have in your pocket - but apparently Mt. Gox didn't have any. Whoops.
I was intrigued by this, so I did a little research. It's a shame you really did not do a very good job here with explaining what happened as your post was interesting and on topic, but yeah, this paragraph could have been a lot better. The "otaku freak" as you call him did not personally cancel anything as your writing seems to claim. What he did was send threatening letters, sometimes with suspicious liquids or powders, to various places that were associated with the anime or its writer in some way and those places canceled many events related to Kuroko's Basketball. As to why he apparently had it in for this particular anime, it gets into sub-genres of anime that I'm not really qualified to talk about it and it seems that maybe he had a problem with the people who were interested in it and focused his rage at the creators and supporters. Apparently popular anime series have "events" of some kind in various places, but I have no idea what goes on there.
Anyway, Japan sounds better to me than some countries I could name where not only is it impossible to lock up anybody for the rest of their life no matter how many people they kill, they actually start to feel sorry for the criminal because he's been locked up.
They do tend to bring only cases they think they'll win - there aren't any plea bargains (which is a huge improvement over the current US justice system). That said, they also have a big problem with police/prosecutors relying on (often coerced) confessions to win convictions.
Also, there has been something of a tradition that many judges are inclined to trust the prosecutors/police, that's only more recently been whittled away at with some of the evidence that's come to light in old cases with DNA evidence brought in. Consider Hakamada Iwao, who was found guilty of murder, only to be exonerated 45 years later when DNA testing proved his innocence. One of the original judges reportedly considered committing suicide out of shame over it:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...