Earlier Saturday, Kyodo News and
other Japanese media said police were also investigating his possible
involvement in the 2014 disappearance of nearly $390 million worth of
the virtual currency, at current exchange rates.
It was not immediately clear if there would be more charges against Karpeles, who reportedly denied the allegations.
The
global virtual currency community was shaken by the shuttering of
MtGox, which froze withdrawals in early 2014 because of what the firm
said was a bug in the software underpinning Bitcoins that allowed
hackers to pilfer them.
On Saturday, local media, citing
police, said investigators suspect Karpeles knew details about the
missing Bitcoins which were reportedly transferred to an account
controlled by him -- without notifying depositors.
The top-selling Yomiuri
newspaper also said police suspect that Karpeles repeatedly transferred
clients' Bitcoins into his own account for speculative trading.
The
exchange -- which once boasted of handling around 80 percent of global
Bitcoin transactions -- filed for bankruptcy protection soon after the
cyber-money went missing, admitting it had lost 850,000 coins worth 48
billion yen ($387 million). They were worth about $480 million at the
time of the disappearance.
Karpeles later said he had found some 200,000 of the lost Bitcoins in a
"cold wallet" -- a storage device such as a memory stick that is not
connected to other computers.
I hope they lock Karpeles up and throw away the key. He's a crook!!!
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