Interesting theory, but it doesn't jive with all the facts. The rallies correlate very well with Google search activity. If one man or bot was driving these rallies then you would not see the search activity behave in Google the way it has during the rallies. Also without the support of the bot, the market would have severely crashed and stayed down after Mt Gox closed.
Good points.
Why should the bot / THK not simply belong to the part of Gox that binds the exchange to their merchant tools? This would be a simple explanation.
I can't believe Karpeles would leave everybody in the dark for so long, effectively taking any option of finding the hacker via the blockchain from the customers.