Hello Everybody,
Disclaimer: I am pretty pissed of with MtGox because of 3 withdrawals which I never received and finally canceled after a lot of bull shitting mails from their side. Also see
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.0 .
I think that Mr. Karpeles is a person of Bitcoin-public interest and so gossip about him personally is of relevance. However there is little which can be found - but many people here are around a long time and might be knowing much more.
I start of with the little I can make out myself, correct me if I am wrong.
Mark Karpeles is a french expat living in Japan - I can only speculate on the reasons for that, I guess in his home country he would simply be a porky nerd which has a lisp and the women don't look at.
I think besides Magic the Gathering and programming he was never really good at anything and the success of MtGox struck him unexpected. From the Reuters interview we can clearly see that the company is not run professionally, and the loss of 3 payment partners in the last weeks tells a lot.
He is young and unexperienced in running multi-million dollar businesses, talking to banks, governments and press.