Satoshi Craig Wright accused of stealing 1.1 million bitcoins from Dave Kleiman

Dr. Craig Wright

The story of the notorious Dr. Craig Wright, a leading scientist at nChain , which is currently developing an alternative to Bitcoin Core, has gained a new turn . He became known all over the world in 2015, when journalists suspected that he was hiding under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Reporters studied Craig’s personal documents and correspondence when an unknown hacker hacked into his work email. These documents became the "evidence" against Wright-Nakamoto. A few months later, Craig Wright confirmed that he was really Satoshi Nakamoto - and provided false evidence , for which he was obstructed by the bitcoin community and left the stage. Although he did not refuse his statements.

During the 2015 investigation, journalists also put forward the version that digital forensics specialist Dave Kleiman, who died in 2013 after being infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, may be related to the creation of Bitcoin. Apparently, he, as one of the creators of Bitcoin, owned a large number of coins mined at an early stage.

Now these suspicions and conclusions of the 2015 investigation are partially confirmed. Ira Kleiman, on behalf of her dead brother Dave, sued Craig Wright, accusing the latter of stealing 1.1 million bitcoins and intellectual property.

Statement of claim (pdf)filed with the Southern District of California Federal District Court. It states that Dave and Craig jointly controlled over 1.1 million bitcoins through the W&K joint trust fund. Correspondence between partners, which got into the press after the hacking of the mail account mentioned above, makes it clear that they mined these coins at an early stage immediately after the launch of the Bitcoin system. In the cited letter, Craig asks colleagues after Dave’s death to monitor the security of the hard drives of his business partner and check for bitcoin wallets there.

Later, the accused explained that he just wanted to make sure that the funds were safe, and did not intend at all to appropriate bitcoins. However, later an Australian Tax Office investigator said that at a meeting between ATO investigators and Wright’s accountant, Wright himself made it clear that Dave’s bitcoins were at his disposal.

Accountant Craig Wright confirmed that his ward has actively mined bitcoins since 2009 and at some point owned 10% of all coins in circulation, approximately 1.1 million. According to him, the late Kleiman mined about the same amount.

As one of the evidence, Ira Kleiman provided a copy of the mail correspondence between him and Craig Wright from 2014. In one of the letters, he admits that in a joint trust with Dave, they had about 1 million bitcoins, of which 300,000 belonged to Dave, and 700,000 belonged to Craig.



Ira Kleiman hopes that the investigation will establish the exact amount of funds that Craig Wright stole from the joint fund after the death of his brother. But we can assume that this amount may be more than 1.1 million bitcoins, which at the current exchange rate exceeds $ 10 billion (although it is clear that such a sum cannot be cashed out at once).

It should be noted that Iru is represented by the well-known law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, which participated in many high-profile trials, including in the Bush v. Gore lawsuit after the 2000 presidential election, where the loser candidate Gore accused Bush of winning with minimal advantage in falsifying the results voting in Florida, which decided the outcome of the election (the governor of Florida was the president’s younger brother).

According to Ira Kleiman, the defendant confiscated his brother's bitcoins, and also appropriated some intellectual property to Bitcoin technology, including program code. Perhaps now Wright is using this intellectual property to develop an alternative version of Bitcoin Core that his company nChain is working on.

The plaintiff claims the return of 1.1 million bitcoins and payment of compensation for the stolen intellectual property.

Interestingly, the lawsuit does not raise the question of which of the two partners posed as Satoshi Nakamoto on the forum (Craig himself, Dave or both of them, or none of them). But during the trial, this mystery can clear up.