Saturday, August 1, 2015

Who is Mark Karpelès, that French stopped in Japan? – The Obs

It appeared, chubby, Saturday, August 1 on television images and photographs, wearing a blue t-shirt with very large capital letters the inscription “Effortless French” (French effortlessly ) and wearing a baseball cap lowered part to the face, while the authorities were taking him.

The Japanese police arrested the French Mark Karpeles , owner of the platform for exchange of bitcoins MtGox whose dramatic collapse last year after a series of allegations of fraud had tainted the reputation of this virtual currency.

He is accused of falsifying data in the computer system of the platform in 2013 to artificially create one million dollars (910,500 euros), according to a spokeswoman the police.

Japanese media had reported on their side earlier Saturday that police were investigating the possible further involvement of Mark Karpeles in the disappearance of bitcoins in 2014 for the equivalent of about 355 million euros.

Mark Karpeles has denied the accusations, according to media Japanese.

A 190 IQ

The French is far from a complete stranger. Young “geek” of 30 years, as nicknamed “La Tribune” in a portrait published in February 2014, was born in a suburb of Dijon, he moved to Japan in 2009.

The site refers to a “as the coding.” He cut his teeth in the video game designer Lynux Cyberjoueurs, distributor of computer products Fotovista (now Pixmania) and in the specialist download Nexway video games. According to his former boss Nexway, questioned, he posted 190 IQ.

When he moved to Japan -including he learned the language in 30-days, he created his own company, Tibanne specializing in web hosting and development applications. On his blog Magical Tux (off today) he gives advice hacking, wrote “La Tribune”. In 2011, fascinated by the phenomenon bitcoin, he bought MtGox.

a few months ago, the site undergoes a first cyber attack: a significant amount of Bitcoin disappears and the data of thousands of users are published. Mark Karpelès farm shop in June 2011 before reopening. Despite a few glitches, the site takes a titanic scale: millions of dollars pass there every day. The giant said control 80% of world trade in bitcoin.

lost 850,000 bitcoins

But new problems resurface in 2014. The company stopped its transactions in February, saying the victim of attacks informatiques.La platform was little filed for bankruptcy after admitting to have lost 850,000 bitcoins worth 48 billion yen (about € 355 million at current prices). Mark Karpeles was later said to have found some 200,000 of these bitcoins in a place of computer storage that was not connected to other computers.

According to the TV channel Public NHK, quoting police, investigators suspect Mark Karpeles to know the circumstances of the disappearance of bitcoins, which have been transferred to an account controlled by him, without informing the applicants.

The mass-circulation daily Yomiuri Shimbun, for his part said police suspected Mark Karpeles to have transferred several times the bitcoins to his clients own account for speculative purposes.

Mark Karpeles according to media had refused to surrender to the United States in 2014 while he was still Japan to answer questions on the collapse of its platform.

(AFP)

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