Late this week, Canadian Bitcoin holders filed a class-action suit against defunct online Bitcoin exchange MtGox. The suit named MtGox, its affiliates, and its two major shareholders, Mark Karpeles and Jed McCaleb, as well as Japan’s second largest bank, Mizuho Bank, where MtGox kept an account.
In the US, a class-action suit that was filed in late February was amended late Friday afternoon to name another primary plaintiff as well as several new defendants, including “John Doe defendants” and Mizuho Bank. MtGox KK filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in February, shielding it from lawsuits in the US, but MtGox’s executives, its parent company Tibanne KK, and its US subsidiaries are not protected, Reuters notes.
MtGox found itself in dire straits last month, when it appeared to have lost 750,000 bitcoins belonging to its customers as well as 100,000 of its own Bitcoins after weeks of DDOS attacks and “transaction malleability” problems. In total, MtGox is estimated to have lost $ 468 million worth of bitcoins. In mid-February, the exchange halted all withdrawals, and plaintiffs in both Canadian and US cases suspect large-scale fraud.
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Ars Technica
