Mt. Gox CEO Decides to Appeal Conviction on Manipulating Financial Records

Mark Karpeles, former CEO of now-defunct Mt. Gox crypto exchange, has appealed his conviction on charges of manipulating data, The Associated Press (AP) reports on March 29.

On March 15, Karpeles was acquitted of charges of embezzlement, but was found guilty of tampering with financial records, with the court stating that he manipulated data to harm his clients, betraying their trust and abusing his engineering skills.

The Tokyo District Court reportedly found Karpeles guilty of combining his personal assets with those of the exchange in order to conceal the platform’s losses to hackers. Karpeles reportedly received a two and a half years jail sentence, which he will have to serve in the case he commits another offence within four years.

According to reports yesterday, Japanese prosecutors had subsequently dropped their appeal to the acquittal of the Mt. Gox CEO. According to The Mainichi, prosecutors had initially sought to appeal the acquittal on embezzlement charges, but subsequently decided to let the decision stand.

Karpeles told AP that he decided to appeal the data manipulation charges because the judge had not fully looked at the defense argument.

Karpeles’ lawyer Nobuyasu Ogata reportedly explained that Karpeles was making an effort to reduce risks for Mt. Gox users with his actions following the massive 850,000 Bitcoin (BTC) hack back in 2014.

Karpeles said that he believes appealing to the judgement is appropriate so that he can be judged again in “full consideration of all the facts,” he wrote in an email to AP.

Last week, Mt. Gox’s trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, announced that he has finished processing creditors rehabilitation claims and that they will be notified of the results within a few days. The number of users affected by the hack reportedly exceeds 24,000.