A spokesman for the Tokyo Police said France-born Karpeles, 30, was
suspected of manipulating data on the exchange’s computer system in 2013
to falsely create about $1.0 million.
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.
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