Mark Karpeles is responsible for failing to protect funds, says Bitcoin Cash’s Roger Ver

Roger Ver, the CEO of Bitcoin.com and a well-known Bitcoin Cash proponent, recently spoke about Mark Karpeles. Karpeles, the former CEO of Mt. Gox – the infamous Bitcoin exchange, made headlines this week after he received a suspended sentence from the Tokyo District Court.

Karpeles was found guilty of altering numbers in the firm’s financial records and was acquitted of all other charges, including embezzlement of funds. The verdict came as a relief for the CEO as he would have faced up to ten years in prison if the alleged embezzlement charges had been proven. He was charged with the embezzlement of around $3 million in customer funds.

The Tokyo District Court ruled that “he had acted without ill intent,” reported Bloomberg. Additionally, he was given a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence, which he will have to serve if he committed another crime within the next four years.

The court also stated,

“The charge of electronic record tampering is true and deserves punishment, but there’s no criminal evidence of embezzlement […] there is no excuse for the defendant, who is an engineer with expert knowledge, to abuse his status and authority to perform clever criminal acts.”

Roger Ver, in an interview with Decrypt, stated that Karpeles was “responsible for not doing a good job protecting the funds from the hackers”. Nevertheless, the Bitcoin Cash proponent also clarified that he held the hackers responsible for stealing the funds.

Mt. Gox was once the biggest Bitcoin exchange platform in the world, controlling over 70% of all BTC transactions. However, the exchange fell victim to a hack, and subsequently lost control of over 7% of all Bitcoins in circulation. This resulted in the platform shutting down its operations and declaring bankruptcy.

Presently, Mt. Gox is undergoing a civil rehabilitation program under which victims of the platform will be repaid their losses with the Bitcoins that were discovered by Karpeles in cold wallets. Ver is noted to be one of these victims, holding “life-changing amounts of Bitcoins” on the exchange, reported Decrypt.

Further, with respect to Karpeles’s suspended prison sentence, Ver said that it was only for “those who are physically dangerous towards others”. He also suggested that people should be punished after they were convicted, not before, in light of Karpeles being interrogated for 50 days in a row.