The former chief executive of Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange is in deep legal trouble. Last week, Japanese prosecutors filed embezzlement charges against French-born Mark Karpeles in connection with the disappearance of about $2.7 million in virtual currency.

Last month, 30-year-old Karpeles was arrested in Tokyo on charges of unlawfully extracting and using privabte electromagnetic records. Karpeles remains in custody, but he can petition the court for release pending trial, according to Agence France Presse.

Karpeles was first taken into police custody over allegations that he manipulated transaction records in Mt Gox’s trading system to inflate the balance of an account under his name.

“He created a false information that $1 million had been transferred into the account, when in fact it had not been,” police said at the time of his arrest.