Lawyers suing self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright for $10 billion said his fabled “bonded courier” provided them with a list of phony bitcoin addresses.
In a May 6 filing, attorney Velvel Freedman asked the court for more time to file sanctions against nChain chief scientist Wright, as the list of addresses for the 1.1 million bitcoins he said he mined as Satoshi Nakamoto are fake.
“Plaintiffs intend to file a sanctions motion based on Defendant’s conduct in these proceedings,” Freedman wrote. “This motion will include, but not be limited to, the Defendant’s provision of a false notice and false list of bitcoin addresses… [and] whether or not this mysterious figure has appeared from the shadows and whether the Defendant now has access to the last key slice needed to unlock the encrypted file.’”
Freedman represents the estate of Wright’s late partner, Dave Kleiman, which wants half of those bitcoins and half of the Bitcoin intellectual property. The vast majority of the crypto community believes Wright is lying about being Nakamoto.
Phony bitcoin addresses
Wright has long claimed that those bitcoins, mined at the beginning of the first cryptocurrency’s blockchain, had been locked away in a growing series of Tulip Trusts (currently three), with the multi-part encryption key scheduled to be provided by a “bonded courier” on Jan. 1, 2020. On Jan. 14, he filed a Notice of Compliance telling the court the courier had arrived with the addresses and key codes.
However, even Wright’s lawyers admitted at the time that he did not have the key codes.
Wright has already been sanctioned and fined several times by the court for lying and providing forged documents. Beyond that, both Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who is overseeing pre-trial discovery, and presiding Judge Beth Bloom of the federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, have flat out called Wright a liar.
“I give no weight to sworn statements of Dr. Wright that advance his interests but that have not been challenged by cross-examination and for which I cannot make a credibility determination,” Judge Reinhart wrote in response on March 9. “I have previously found that Dr. Wright gave perjured testimony in my presence.”
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November 29, 2018 -
