Of course it is.  Must be all that Xanax which makes the OP think his story is plausible.

It's far more likely that he's become aware that someone else had 1200 BTC on a Macbook they lost/sold/had stolen in 2010 and wants to try to recover the Macbook because he realises what they're potentially worth and the person who owned the Macbook doesn't (after all, they weren't worth much in 2010 and lots of people abandoned BTC altogether back then - people even lost interest and deleted their wallets).

If you think that a drug dealer who accepted a Macbook in exchange for drugs over 3 years ago would still have it you're as deluded as the OP.  Drug dealers accept so many electronic goods as payment that he's not even going to remember who he sold/gave that particular Macbook to even if OP can locate him.

The police aren't going to care about a 3 year old theft either.  Any story the OP tells them about why he's suddenly interested in trying to recover property he did nothing about recovering at the time it was "stolen" is going to sound suspicious, not that the police have the resources to investigate every minor property theft anyway, even if it's reported immediately (normally the main reason for even reporting it is so you can claim it on insurance).

Apple's not going to get involved.  If you didn't report the Macbook as stolen in 2010 then you have no way to prove that you didn't sell it yourself.

I agree with other posters.  OP sounds a lot more like someone who's looking for advice about how to get his hands on something belonging to someone else than someone trying to recover his own property.  Xanax doesn't make you lose your memory for 3 fucking years.

The current forum is not "fine".  It's suffered intrusions on more than one occasion and it goes offline a lot.

Certainly you don't need a million dollar forum if it's primary purpose is to give people somewhere to sit around dribbling bullshit about Bitcoin, but theymos' vision for Bitcointalk seems to incorporate more than that. 

I'm not hugely in favour of the forum being a place to conduct business - I think it tends to make people careless - but that seems to be part of the vision.  Certainly if this million dollar forum was designed from the ground up with security baked in, then the software might be attractive to other enterprises with similar requirements (and I'm sure that's crossed theymos' mind). 

You don't spend $1 million on developing forum software in order to offer a prettier look or bells and whistles.  It would make sense both financially and ideologically (if you're theymos - remember that theymos is very ideologically driven) to do it if you thought the end product might assist grey or black market forums to be less penetrable though.

No, the increased demand from within China drove the price up.  People wanting to use BTC as a way of getting funds out of China were willing to pay a premium to do so.  When you have one segment of the market willing to pay more, BTC are going to flow to that segment.

SR is probably the last place you should try given that SR itself is insolvent and the precedent for people selling BTC on SR being arrested for money laundering has already been set.

Litigation by users - whether launched in the US or in Japan - is always going to be a much slower and more expensive route to sorting out all the issues with MtGox than involving regulators.  Neither option guarantees the return of user funds.

Deposit takers aren't always classified as banks.  PayPal is a prime example of how a financial service provider can be regulated differently in different jurisdictions and in fact it's prohibited in Japan from providing certain services which may only be provided by banks, although it certainly accepts deposits.

It's not really enough to look at banking laws alone.  You need to look at financial services regulations as a whole and see whether there's some other regulation which is more applicable to the situation at hand.

The only reason anyone should care if other people want to send money to MtGox is that it will allow them to operate a ponzi for longer if that's what they're actually doing now. 

If that's what people are actually worried about, then the answer is to get regulators to look into whether MtGox is in fact solvent.  That's going to have a far more immediate and greater impact on their operations than encouraging people to either boycott them or support them.  Anyone sending money to MtGox at this stage is motivated by greed and knows full well that they may never see their funds again.

I've gotten a few spam PMs since joining but I've never got a BTC-related email from anyone I didn't actually give an email address to.

If you think he's bad, you should see what the various SR disasters have brought out of the woodwork.

It would be fucking hilarious if he's been stupid enough to use his real name, though.  Implying that he's sufficiently connected to major SR players that he'd be able to get them to "call off the dogs" is gonna make him one hell of a person of interest to investigators still looking for more people to prosecute in relation to SR.  Fuckwit.

Hedge funds also have to comply with a whole lot of regulations in order to operate legally.  You're not going to get a lot of genuine interest unless you the public backing of people with a track record and without demonstrating an ability to be compliant.  Your website doesn't demonstrate any of those things at the moment.  It's not at all persuasive in convincing people that you have any genuine contacts or ability to pull off such an idea.  

It's basically a "nobody" asking people to give him money.  Your "Message to Mark" further undermines your credibility and could be construed as a threat, blackmail or both.  A genuine hedge fund isn't going to be writing letters offering to rescue someone from nasty criminals wanting revenge. You're basically acknowledging that MtGox is used for money laundering and that you want to take over a service you know is being used for illegal purposes.  That's more than enough reason for authorities to prevent you from acquiring MtGox even if Mark was willing to sell it to you.

Go peddle your idea on the SR forums.  Maybe your "hedge fund" can rescue the dark markets while you're at it.

A company that's already embroiled in multiple lawsuits and government investigations is hardly an attractive takeover target.

Mark's comment that a US court isn't going to order MtGox to do something they're not allowed to do under US law probably has some merit.  He's being an ass about it but no court can force the financial institutions with which MtGox deals to allow them to move unlimited amounts of USD, when those limits are a result of compliance with US law. 

MtGox should probably have just abandoned the USD market altogether as their "workarounds" never pan out and they keep opening themselves up to more and more potential consequences by continuing to serve that market.  Unfortunately, the very real limitations imposed on USD transactions due to compliance with various AML laws and treaties also benefit companies wishing to hide their financial instability.

Y'all might want to read gmaxwell's comments on reddit before you get too excited.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ymwzj/mtgox_still_authoring_invalid_transactions/

A lawsuit which isn't going to be determined for a very long time isn't going to influence the behaviour of other services now.  If it was, then MtGox would already have changed its behaviour as conversion, negligence and breach of contract are all causes of action in the Cartmell et al lawsuit against Bitcoinica.

It's also only going to "serve as a warning to others" at some time in the future if the plaintiffs actually prevail.  If they don't, then it's only going to further entrench undesirable behaviour by Bitcoin services.

It's also worth remembering that while you can sue anyone for anything in the US, that's not the case everywhere else.  Before you even consider litigation in a foreign jurisdiction you need to first establish how its legal system differs from your own.  What options are open to you in the US is pretty irrelevant if the US isn't the jurisdiction involved.  You need the advice of experienced litigators in the jurisdiction where you'll be filing rather than guessing about what might be possible under a legal system with which you're unfamiliar.

The first source is the complaint filed by the Manhattan US Attorney.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/SchremFaiellaChargesPR/Faiella,%20Robert%20M.%20and%20Charlie%20Shrem%20Complaint.pdf

The official statement by the US Attorney's Office is here.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/SchremFaiellaChargesPR.php

A link to the Reuters article quoted in the OP is the first thing in the OP.

Lulz.  Not only do companies continue trading while insolvent all the time despite it being illegal, MtGox has already been found to have breached laws relating to operating in other nations - operating as a financial services provider in France without appropriating licensing and operating as a money transmitter in the US without appropriate licensing.

Do you really think the ongoing problem of MtGox not processing withdrawals in a timely manner doesn't already harm Bitcoin?  That's not an issue they're going to resolve any time soon.  They go through "banking partners" faster than most people go through underwear and the outcome is always the same - at some point they either get dumped by the "partners" or restrictions are placed on their account slowing withdrawals to a crawl.

Do you really think that the authorities aren't going to go trawling through MtGox looking for other instances of it being used in relation to illegal activity now that it's been established it was being used by people connected to SR (MtGox isn't mentioned by name in the Shrem complaint, but the exchange referenced in the complaint has bank accounts in Japan and Poland, which makes clear that it's MtGox)?

If Bitcoin itself is severely harmed by the failure of MtGox then perhaps Bitcoin isn't the cryptocurrency of the future and it's better that Bitcoin itself fail early so that it can be replaced by something more robust which is less driven by speculation.  For the most part, it's not people using Bitcoin as a payment protocol who are going to be harmed if MtGox fails but those who are seeking to increase their wealth.

To expand a bit on what all this means at local level.

Services design their own AML/KYC policies and risk management processes with the over-arching guidelines and statutory requirements in mind.  Conventional financial institutions tend to have extremely conservative risk assessment frameworks because they're at risk of fines in the hundreds of millions if they're found to be non-compliant.

The risk assessment/management procedures individual institutions use are developed by them.  They get to decide which customers and what transactions are "high risk" and can and do choose to cease providing services to high risk accounts rather than apply enhanced AML/KYC compliance procedures to those accounts.  They are under no legal obligation whatsoever to allow you to operate a high risk account and don't have to justify a refusal to do so (under some circumstances, they may even be prohibited from giving you a specific reason).

Compliance is a huge administrative burden for financial institutions and it's both cheaper and easier for them to dump accounts/customers who add to that burden.  They not only don't care if you take your business elsewhere, they actively want you to do so - they want your accounts to be someone else's headache.

When your financial institution refuses to process a transaction or closes your account, they are not telling you what to do with your money.  They don't actually give a fuck what you do with your money.  What they're doing is refusing to act as the middleman in transactions which expose them to potential liability.  Any fees they might have earned from that transaction pale into insignificance compared to the fines which allowing a single transaction which breaches AML/KYC requirements can attract (it's 11 million per breach here in Australia for a corporation and a single transaction can involve multiple breaches).  It's not about your right to send funds to potentially flaky Bitcoin services or Nigerian "princes" - it's about their right (and, to a large extent, obligation) to not involve themselves in high risk transactions.

People in general greatly over-estimate their importance as customers to financial institutions.  You may believe that you're giving them "a lot of business", but in the overall context of their operations you're not bringing them enough profit to justify the risks involved in servicing your account.  They can always find low risk customers to replace you.

They announced it as an address for people to send stuff to.  They're not a public-facing service, so there's not a whole lot of risk in people knowing where they're operating from providing people can't just wander in and out of the building - which they can't.  It doesn't have to be a highly secure facility if all they want is to prevent people being able to barge into MtGox and harass Mark/staff.

Both the police and building security have already intervened with the protesters.  Mark pretty much gets to avoid everyone but the authorities at this point if that's the way he wants it.  He can keep the public away from his staff at Cerulean Tower and it's not even essential that he works from there himself.

Mark's pretty arrogant but he's probably not wrong if he's thinking that protesters are going to give up and go away fairly quickly if he can limit their opportunities for contact with him.  Moving into a building which already has security in place - and which he can access without going through the front door if necessary - is a quicker and easier way to avoid angry customers than remaining in the old location and employing security contractors to keep the riff-raff away.

The biggest LOL is how nobody cared when they operated out of Cerulean Tower previously.  While it's almost certainly true that Mark's moved there so he can get security to keep angry customers and nosy journalists away, this isn't a "new" business location for MtGox - it's one from which they previously operated.

This is probably a very bad time for newbies to start using MtGox.

You need to be verified with them in order to deposit and withdraw and their verification process is notoriously slow.  Even if withdrawals are re-enabled at some point, they've always been slow and are likely to be even slower because of the new limits MtGox is imposing.

Don't be persuaded to jump on to MtGox purely because of the price.  You really need to do your research and understand what issues they were having prior to this before sending them any funds.