Topic: MTGOX SUBPOENAED BY US PROSECUTOR (Read 4616 times)

Welcome to the Bitcoin Inquisition.

They can come before civil suits too, at least if the civil suit is initiated by an administrative agency.

And they can come during the course of Congressional hearings which aren't related to a civil suit or a crime.

I'm not sure just alluding to grand jury subpoenas would have been as accurate as saying that you were just completely incorrect.

If I had known that your experience with subpoenas had come solely from dealing with civil suits as an attorney, then maybe I could have been more specific, but I didn't know at first what you were talking about.


Thanks.

I don't have much knowledge of Bitcoin before this fall (the season; no pun intended), but I'll take a look at that article.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your first reply was something like, "that's completely incorrect." I would have been more inclined to double check my answer earlier had you said: 'that's not correct. Subpoenas can come before someone is charged with a crime.'  In any case, good talking with you.  

Yes, I do. On the other hand, in May 2013 it is was reported that Gox was already being accused of criminal wrongdoing.

Whether the particular subpoena that was supposedly received in February 2014 was related to this, or some new investigation of Gox, or one of Gox's customers, or something else altogether, we don't know.


"You agree that grand juries issue subpoenas before a person is charged, right?"

"Subpoenas often come before someone is charged with a crime."

I made those two statements pretty early on.

Records subpoenaed?  Well, no shit!  Who didn't see this coming a few quarters ago?

Karpeles should have just handed them over to Vessenes some quarters ago and walked away with whatever money he could get.  The end result is the same.  Vessenes (the chairman of the board of the Bitcoin Foundation) has been hot for coin tracking since forever, and Mt. Gox's dataset is where it all begins.

I, in fact, only started having some respect for Karpeles when it looked like he smelled a rat in the Coinlab deal and balked.  Unfortunately I lost a lot of that respect when he stuck me for the $5k that I put at risk as a system probe of sorts.

"Your point which I disagreed with was that there have to be charges (or a civil case) before there's a subpoena."

Actually, I think I qualified my statement by saying "I think" or something to that effect.  But whatever, it's all good and I learned a little something about Grand Jury Subpoenas (which is cool). The purpose of my initial post was to raise the possibility that Gox/Mk may not be the direct targets of the alleged subpoena (i.e., that the subpoena is related to another case). I believe you actually agreed with this.

Suggestion: next time, say "why" you disagree instead of asserting it without any explanation.  That'll save us time in getting to the right answer.





 

And we've heard that Mark Karpeles is the CEO of "Bitcoin". I wouldn't read too much into the exact phrasing of the news media.


I'd say we don't even know if it's really a subpoena. The news quite often get terminology like this wrong.


Your point which I disagreed with was that there have to be charges (or a civil case) before there's a subpoena.

You didn't say "regular subpoena" (if you had, I might have asked what you meant by a "regular subpoena"). A grand jury subpoena is a subpoena. So is an administrative subpoena, for that matter.

I'm not a lawyer.

Here's a decent summary for criminal procedure at the federal level (from the Minnesota US Attorney's office):

http://www.justice.gov/usao/mn/criminal_proc.html  

Anth0ny, you're right, civil litigation and criminal law are different.  But, subpoenas are common to both, but I suppose they can be used differently.

EDIT: I conducted a little research on this issue. Two things: we've only heard about a "subpoena," not a "Grand Jury Subpoena." I believe persons suspected of a crime and that are being investigated for said crime may need a Grand Jury Subpoena to be compelled to testify at a hearing. Grand Jury Subpoenas of a target in an investigation require the approval of the grand jury itself as well as a US Attorney or AG.  

From the US Attorney's Criminal Resource Manual (Chapter on Grand Juries, Section Subpoenaing a Target of an Investigation): "If a voluntary appearance cannot be obtained, the target should be subpoenaed only after the grand jury and the United States Attorney or the responsible Assistant Attorney General have approved the subpoena."  

Here, it sounds like MK or Gox got served with a regular subpoena (but I guess we don't really know). If that's the case, I think my initial point still stands - either there are charges against them or its for somebody else's case. But even if the subpoena is a Grand Jury Subpoena where MK or Gox are the targets, there would have been some kind of proceeding first to secure the subpoena since the Grand Jury's approval is required. In that case, my statement about "charges" being a requirement is not accurate.  

I'm not an OFFICIAL Attorney but been sue a few times, I always go Pro-Se. I'm actually being sue at this moment and also suing Cox, for trolling my connection.

What is your legal background?

Japan wont even think about it, His not even Japanese 
 

it's very effective. US laws works in all countries.

Argument? I'm done arguing. If I wanted to read "prove it" over and over again I could write a bot to do that. I could even call it JudgeEliza and have it impersonate a judge.

It's clear to me that either you have no idea how grand juries work, or you just refuse to admit that you were wrong with the "charges filed in a criminal matter before a subpoena" comment.

I'd venture a guess that this is true.

Great argument.

Your experience practising civil litigation won't give you much insight into how grand juries work. But presumably you went to law school at some point...

No, I do not agree.

I will graciously concede the argument and admit that I'm wrong if you can show me a rule of court procedure that shows me I'm wrong (no ill-will or ego, here).  Until then, I'm going to go with what I know from my own experience as an attorney who practices a fair amount of civil litigation.  

I'm also going to go with this theory: there is a federal criminal case pending where the Defendant (XXX) engaged in a fair amount of trading at Mt. Gox and the prosecutors want to discover information related to those trades for their case against XXX. 

OK. But do you agree that "there must be a pending suit in a civil matter or charges filed in a criminal matter before a subpoena can be issued" is completely incorrect?

Subpoenas often come before someone is charged with a crime.

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To tie this back to the thread, it's certainly possible that the US sent Mt. Gox a subpoena because they were investigating possible wrongdoing, and when the attorney working for Mt. Gox looked into things to try to respond, they came to the realization of "oh shit, Gox doesn't actually have any money!" The investigation leading to the subpoena may or may not have been related to the lack of money, in such a (hypothetical) scenario.

Again, the only part that is really hard to imagine is that these problems were caused solely by transaction malleability and that no one at Gox knew about them until very recently. Surely if Gox really did lose hundreds of thousands of BTC due to transaction malleability, someone on the inside knew about it and/or was involved in cooking the books.

I think grand juries are designed to indict suspects on preliminary evidence. If an indictment results, a warrant for arrest is issued.  Congress would not be involved in this matter if a US Attorney is involved (i.e., Dept. of Justice =/= Legislature).