Mark Karpeles, the former head of Mt. Gox — a bitcoin exchange that went bankrupt in 2014 — was found guilty of data manipulation by the Tokyo District Court on Friday and handed a prison sentence of 2½ years that will be suspended for four years.
He was found not guilty on a separate charge of embezzling millions of dollars through customer accounts.
Karpeles, a 33-year-old Frenchman, was the head of Mt. Gox when the firm filed for bankruptcy protection in 2014 after 850,000 bitcoins — worth an estimated ¥48 billion at the time — disappeared from its digital vaults.