Defense: Mt. Gox CEO was Silk Road administrator

The defense of Ross Ulbricht, who is suspected of running the Silk Road underground marketplace, claims the former CEO of Mt. Gox was the actual Dread Pirate Roberts. Homeland Security temporarily had the CEO in mind for this.

The former CEO of Mt. Gox would have framed Ullbricht, the defense claimed. Ullbricht’s lawyer questioned a Homeland Security agent, who said the CEO, Mark Karpeles, had indeed been the prime suspect for a while. The officer was involved in Silk Road undercover.

The investigation focused on him because Karpeles had a motive: he would like to drive up the price of Bitcoins, by using Silk Road to promote cryptocurrency trading. This would make Karpeles, who had invested heavily in bitcoin, wealthy.

Karpeles denies being Dread Pirate Roberts. The manager of Silk Road operated under this pseudonym. “The investigators have come to that conclusion,” Karpeles told Ars Technica, “That’s why I’m not there in the lawsuit. The defense does everything to divert the attention of his client.” Ullbricht said earlier in the case that he had founded Silk Road, but that he was not the administrator.

Between 2010 and 2013, Mt. Gox the largest Bitcoin exchange. However, the service went bankrupt after a huge amount of Bitcoins disappeared. The currency is said to have been funneled away through internal fraud.