You assume that this support person responding to you in broken English occupies a position of importance within MtGox high enough to be able to have access to its internal workings and accounting procedures.

I'd find it worrying if such an employee did have enough access to confirm any of the rumours at the time to be honest. Unfortunately in this case the logic that MtGox fails so hard at everything that even their lowest level employees must have been given privileged access doesn't follow.

So, basically, hard to tell if Karpeles was lying to his customers or both his staff and his customers.