As I wrote in September 2013 during a typical argument with sturle:
Defendants are informed and believe that in March and April, 2013 MtGox customers, at the
suggestion of CoinLab, deposited $12,788,701.08 into one or more CoinLab bank accounts;
CoinLab then caused the amount of such funds to be credited to such customers' MtGox
accounts but CoinLab did not transfer the actual funds into the MtGox bank account. As a
result, such customers' MtGox account reflected a higher amount of currency funds available
to such customers than were actually in the MtGox bank account. In April, 2013, and upon
the demand of MtGox, CoinLab transferred a portion of those amounts, $ 7,473,490.29, to the
MtGox bank account, leaving a balance of approximately $ 5,315,210.79 to be transferred to
the MtGox account and which is being wrongfully held by CoinLab.
So they they are admitting they have a big hole, and they do not say anywhere that they had to cover the hole with their own money (I would have stated that clearly in the official document, to wipe out doubt about insolvency - wouldn't have you?). The only hard cold fact they are stating is "
such customers' MtGox account reflected a higher amount of currency funds available to such customers than were actually in the MtGox bank account".
The most plausible explanation to the ongoing delays, given the above and the other information available to the public, is that Gox is low on cash and running a fractional reserve.
So, IMO the big question is not "if" they knew they were short of customer's money because it is painfully obvious THEY KNEW, the big question is:
WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO???$5.5M are held by Department of Home Security (the "Dwolla situation") and $5.3M by Coinlab, that's clear. But where did the rest of the money go, as they are claming they have a hole of $22M? We need to factor in that they have made +$10M in trading fees during the last year, so in reality the missing money is at least $32M...
Crazy stuff, you really can't make this shit up... And I'd bet that the hole was caused by a a few things compounded together:
1) Bad management, eg. considering customer funds as "assets" and thus using them to cover operational expenses believing they would cover that up with fees later on (something similar to what they did by crediting customers accounts with money they did not held in reality as per the Coinlab situation). Maybe they even tried to do some arbitrage with customers money and they fucked up - what I know for sure is that incompetence should NEVER be underestimated.
2) Seizures by LE. We know for sure that DHS is holding $5M of Gox's customers money and that $5.3M are held by Coinlab. It doesn't look like there's more than that because in the leaked docs they clearly listed that money (DHS+Coinlab) as "assets", and there was no other entry for other money that could have potentially been held by other parties.
3) Outright stealing. Right now that seems more plausible to me than a few months ago. I always thought Gox was "basically honest", but after seeing their business plan it seems to me they were just a bunch of amateurs playing with third party money like it was their own - that's criminal negligence at best. They were operating an exchange but their accounting looks like the one of a bank, listing customer deposits as assets of the company, like they could use that money to cover their own expenses. That's crazy (and criminal) in my book. At this point I wouldn't be surprised they even took out dividends from the company at some point, while knowing they were running fractional and virtually bankrupt... And that's stealing.
(crosspost from the Wall Observer thread)
It makes sense now......that's why he couldn't/wouldn't give Coinbase the documents they needed......the cover would have been blown then,instead of later 
