Because it is non-trivial to generate a computer system that creates realistic looking trades in an order book.  If you generate fake trades, then pretty soon it will be obvious to everyone that something is very wrong.  Generating realistic trade data is something that requires a small team of programmers, who you can't afford because you are in the hole.

Madoff had programmers that did nothing except work on algorithms to generate fake trades.  MtGox didn't have the money to do this.


Because you are not trying to steal BTC or fiat.  You are trying to cover up a theft that was done by someone else.

I don't know about the details of the initial loss of bitcoin, but if you replace the first paragraph with "X loses a lot of bitcoin" then the rest of the story makes sense.

This theory also explains the terrible customer support and PR.

1) If Mark was deep in the hole, then ever single cent that they made from trading fees would have gone into fixing the hole.  Any money spent on customer support and PR would have been less money to spend on fixing the hole.

2) Any competent PR or customer support person would have quickly figured out what was going on, and resigned and spilled the beans.  Having a big secret made it impossible to hire anyone competent.  Even a PR or customer support person with no ethics or moral character would refused to have worked for MtGox, because the big secret meant that they were unlikely to get paid.