3 ms·

Well this could be interesting if it's more than hype to sell more paper. Karpelès having quite a trail of fraud and misconduct, I'm curious to learn the resul

Well this could be interesting if it's more than hype to sell more paper. Karpelès having quite a trail of fraud and misconduct, I'm curious to learn the results of the Magic The Gathering Online Exchange investigation. For those who don't know yet about the past of Karpelès, he started his career when over a disagreement with his employer he moved some of the company's clients' data over to his own servers, redirected a company domain towards one of his then resigned from the company. When the company confronted him, he refused to give back what he took and offered to buy the domain he stole, so the company went to court with Karpelès admitting he did it to the police but telling a different story on his blog [1]. With Karpelès not appearing at the audience because he had left the country he got sentenced in 2010 to 1 year of prison and 45 000€ in damage [2]. This is only part of a trail of lies, deception and fraud from Karpalès for his personal profit that has started to surface, we know have a blog he made in 2006 where he confessed of getting caught for a youth error of doing bad things with online payment systems for 2 years[3] or how he used lies to get money for a job he didn't do[4]. Of course that doesn't mean he did stole the coins, that's why I want to know about the investigation. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070630213730/http://www.magicaltux.net/blog/2006/11/23/105-le-point-sur-2006-eurocenter-portha-ff-st-etc https://web.archive.org/web/20070630213730/http://www.magica... [2]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1238981-img-20140720-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1238981-img-20140720... [3]: http://web.archive.org/web/20140302234940/http://blog.magicaltux.net/2006/02/12/pensees-nocturnes/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140302234940/http://blog.magica... [4]: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/exclusive-tibanne-co-ltd-sentenced-2013-mark-karpeless-lies-new/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/exclusive-tibanne-co-ltd-sen...

btown 12y ago
It's astonishing that financially minded people, used to doing due diligence for potential investments in their day jobs, would trust a company with their own personal money without digging into its founder's backstory!
- gwern 12y ago
  Most (all?) of that material was in French, which seems to have been a surprisingly effective barrier. (French proficiency is not terribly common in the US or Japan; and how many people are so paranoid about random counterparties that they will hire translators to go through everything any of the counterparties have ever written looking for red flags? Have you ever done that?) I don't recall even the Mtgox haters bringing up any of the French backstory until not long before the end.

btown 12y ago

It's astonishing that financially minded people, used to doing due diligence for potential investments in their day jobs, would trust a company with their own personal money without digging into its founder's backstory!

gwern 12y ago
Most (all?) of that material was in French, which seems to have been a surprisingly effective barrier. (French proficiency is not terribly common in the US or Japan; and how many people are so paranoid about random counterparties that they will hire translators to go through everything any of the counterparties have ever written looking for red flags? Have you ever done that?) I don't recall even the Mtgox haters bringing up any of the French backstory until not long before the end.