December 13, 2018 12:46 AM
Court proceedings may have stalled his prospects for employment as well as his own development project.
The ex-CEO of the failed MtGox exchange, where 850,000 Bitcoins vanished in 2014, could now face 10 years in jail. Mark Karpelès has been subject to legal proceedings in Japan for criminal allegations of embezzlement and breach of trust. At his first hearing in 2017, he said: "I swear to God I am not guilty."
As of today, December 12, 2018, reports[1] indicate that Japanese prosecutors are seeking a 10-year jail term for Karpelès, who has been indicted for the embezzlement of $3 million worth of MtGox users' money. He is accused of transferring that money "to such uses as investing in a software development business for personal interest" from September to December 2013 as well as manipulating data on the exchange's trading system.
The 850,000 BTC that disappeared from MtGox in February 2014 were worth around $473 million at the time. The amount of missing BTC was reduced to 650,000 when Karpelès, after searching MtGox wallets, found an archived file containing 200,000 BTC. Karpelès told Fortune[2] in April 2018: "At the time, I felt finding these was a good thing for everyone…But now this is also the main reason why we are stuck fighting."
Prosecutors at the Tokyo District Court today claimed that Karpelès "diverted company funds" to invest in a software business and for personal use. They also say Karpelès is partly responsible for "destroying the confidence of bitcoin users."
Though it appears that Karpelès has been expecting a jail sentence, he may not have been expecting such a lengthy one. In March 2018, he told Fortune[3] the legal proceedings had affected his employment prospects, saying: "I have no way to be sure
