Monday, September 19, 2016

Who is Takuro Mizobe (溝部拓郎)?

The first suspicious thing one notices appears in the information on his LinkedIn profile—same as with Riney—where he states that he worked at STORYS.JP as an engineer for “2012 – 2012 (less than a year)”, but that is plainly a lie, as demonstrated below. 

When people are lying in concert, as it appears that Riney and Mizobe have been doing (don't worry Otsuka, you're next), they are doing so for a reason. I won't be able to speculate as to their motivations any further presently due to time constraints, but will get around to that after I've presented all of the relevant information about the group of individuals involved.

Accordingly, before getting started, I’m presenting the work history Mizobe posts on his LinkedIn profile, along with a couple of screenshots of Google search results regarding the employer he appears to currently claim.


Mizobe’s ‘work experience’ per LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/takuro-mizobe-41402550):


Financial Institution     [AmeriCU Credit Union]

2012 – 2012 (less than a year)

2010 – 2012 (2 years)
I'm application developer as part-time job.







Mizobe is listed on the ResuPress website starting in December of 2012, and shown as a member of the staff on the STORYS.JP site through October 2014 (http://web.archive.org/web/20141010173529/http://info.storys.jp/about.html). Incidentally, Storys.JP was “officially” launched on February 27, 2013: http://web.archive.org/web/20130531044318/http://www.jamesriney.com/2013/02/.
The second suspicious thing is that he is quoted as a member of Coincheck in the finance publication article from September 2014 about BitCoin (http://www.coindesk.com/japanese-bitcoin-growth-continues-new-e-commerce-platform/), I linked to in that blogpost. Coincheck (https://coincheck.com/en/exchange) is one of the (two) “services” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincheck) of ResuPress (http://www.resupress.com/), but Mizobe is not listed as a member of the “team” (https://coincheck.com/en/contents/team-member). Maybe Mizobe doesn’t rate at this point as an “engineer” even though he represents the company when speaking to the press; however, he doesn’t list ResuPress or Coincheck on his resume at all, and it is clear from the aforementioned article that he worked for both at least through September 2014. Meanwhile, the other of the (two) “services” provided by ResuPress is STORYS.JP.

Finally, Mizobe never mentions JP Morgan on his work history, whereas Riney repeatedly makes reference to their fated meeting there… Mizobe does make a reference to working at a foreign investment bank in one of the personal “stories” he has posted to the STORYS.JP website (http://web.archive.org/web/20140403121912/http://storys.jp/takuro), but that is not worth presenting at the moment due to time constraints, as it appears to be merely another example of dissimulation.

Meanwhile, Otsuka—the current CMO—of Coincheck lists Mizobe as a member of the TEAM (Managing Director) on this webpage in the text at the bottom and in slide number 7 (of (8), which I’ve posted a screenshot of:


That slide is actually hosted on the following website, which can itself be archived, but only the first slide can be seen (http://web.archive.org/web/20160919161852/http://www.slideshare.net/yusukeotsuka750/coincheck-for-ec20141024?ref=http://sssslide.com/www.slideshare.net/yusukeotsuka750/coincheck-for-ec20141024), so I’ve manually archived the material, even though this screenshot is the only one of importance to this blogpost:



Otsuka also contradicts Mizobe by stating that Mizobe had years of experience at ResuPress/STORYS.JP as well. Moreover, Mizobe not only continues to be shown as a member of the TEAM on the ResuPress website—along with Riney—through May of 2014 (http://web.archive.org/web/20140513062113/http://www.resupress.com/),


but the purported “co-founder” is newly added to the list of Board members for the first time in July of 2014, the same time that Riney and his “advisor” (Nicholas Gianniotis) disappear from the list  (http://web.archive.org/web/20140625120029/http://www.resupress.com/),



It bears noting that the original Coincheck website was launched in Japanese (.jp) namespace, e.g.: http://web.archive.org/web/20141129211512/https://coincheck.jp/.  

The team list was removed by December 2014, and the names of the Board members, which still include Mizobe’s were converted to Japanese (http://web.archive.org/web/20141221205403/http://www.resupress.com/): 


Mizobe remains listed on that webpage, as shown below on the series of screens uploaded for the last archived version of that webpage (October 5, 2015: http://web.archive.org/web/20151005110243/http://www.resupress.com/), until the first archiving of the current iteration of the homepage dating to November 5, 2015 (http://web.archive.org/web/20151105042505/http://www.resupress.com/).
Top:






So, one question is, why has Mizobe emphatically misrepresented his relationship to ResuPress/STORYS.JP/Coincheck on his LinkedIn profile, apparently trying to conceal the fact that he is on the Board of Coincheck, on the one hand, while acting as a high-profile spokesman for the company in the English language press, as per the article I cited along with a quotation in the intial Bitcoin post on this blog (part of a series of articles found here: http://coinalert.eu/20160323110635-Coincheck+Brings+Ethereum+to+Japan.html). One factor may be that he wasn’t worried about the exposure in English, because he didn’t know that the Japan Times was going to delete the fairly innocuous comment I left on the Riney interview article, causing me to investigate the suspected CIA sociopath. 

A final question, moreover, is why is Coincheck, in fact, concealing the fact that Mizobe is a member of the Board and apparently the spokesman of the company with respect to the English press?


That question will have to wait for another day…

No comments:

Post a Comment