An expert witness has filed an affidavit in the Kleiman vs. Wright case, which alleges that Craig Wright stole billions of dollars worth of bitcoins from Dave Kleiman. Kleiman estate is seeking damages in the neighborhood of $10B.
Recently, we had the honor to witness the emotional saga of two people fighting for their baby mercilessly through the media, court and public appearances. Desperate father wanted the baby just to take care of, and to prove – he is the real biological parent.
No, we are not retelling you the Kramer Vs. Kramer story even though Craig Wright might resemble young Dustin Hoffman (but Dustin is still better looking – even now).
The self-proclaimed “parent” of Bitcoin, has been recently involved in a whole heap of lawsuits. He threatened to sue anyone on Twitter who denied him being the real Satoshi and even put $5,000 bounty on identity of Bitcoin maximalist who called him a fraud (greetings to all the @hodlonauts down there).
The last standing in a row was a famous podcaster Peter McCormack who says he is facing a high stakes legal battle with Craig Wright.
However, in the middle of all the turbulence that Wright made, it has been pretty easy to forget he, himself, is facing a multi-billion-dollar suit.
And the latest twist in the case of a former associate’s estate versus the man who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto will do little to dissuade the “Faketoshi” heckles from large swaths of the crypto community.
So, for those who (we don’t know how, but still did), stayed out of this soap opera, let’s do a quick summary:
Back in 2011, young Craig Wright and computer forensics expert Dave Kleinman partnered up to form a Bitcoin mining company called W&K Info Defence Research LLC. Kleinman was already inflicted in Bitcoin research in its early days, A former police detective plus soldier became paralyzed in 1995, after being in a motorcycle accident, and this was when he started working on the concept of computer forensics.
One of the significant contributors of the bitcoin codebase plus the lead developer of the BitPay, Jeff Garzik said in earlier interviews that Kleinman was the real Satoshi and that two of them were communicating until 2013 when Kleiman died. The same year Nakamoto vanished with no warning, and from this point, Garzik was convinced that Kleiman and Satoshi were indeed, one person.
In February 2018, Kleiman family filed a case against Craig Wright accusing him of theft of over $11 billion worth of bitcoins and intellectual property from the estate of Dave Kleiman and W&K shortly after Dave’s 2013 death.
Wright has attempted, unsuccessfully, to have the lawsuit dismissed on more than one occasion. The latest try involved an email submitted to the court earlier this month which Wright asserts invalidates Kleiman’s claim to W&K assets.
The email purportedly demonstrates a 2012 exchange between Kleiman and Uyen Nguyen—one of Wright’s associates—in which Kleiman appoints Nguyen as director of the company. The email is intended to negate the Kleiman estate’s assertion that he never ceded “sole membership” of the firm.
Kleiman Rising From the Grave to Sign?
However, cyber security engineer Dr. Matthew Edman provided written testimony to the court on Monday that Wright’s email evidence is fake. He proved that the email’s digital signature was produced in early 2014 and not 2012 as Wright claimed.
The only problem is that poor Kleiman died in 2013.
Also, a funny thing, that was not mentioned by the expert witness (whose sole job was to inform the court of the falsification of the e-mail), is the fact that Dave Kleiman allegedly spelled his name wrong – if we’re to accept that this e-mail was ever sent by Kleiman at all.
On the Reddit forum, a user claimed that the email exhibit was likely forged and the person gave step by step instructions on how he figured out the PGP signature was from 2014 and not 2012. The controversial Reddit user known as ‘Contrarian,’ who theorized the presumed fake key used in the exhibit, said the “same pref-hash-algos as Craig’s fake keys and were never updated.”
Be it as it may, attorneys for the Kleiman estate wrote in their latest filing:
“Craig has lied to this court every single time he’s tried to dismiss this case — This motion is no exception. Without the fraudulent email, the entire motion falls.”
The court now has to rule what will happen next, but it seems that the high-stakes lawsuit will likely now press forward—and unfavorable judgment could open up a whole new Pandora box for Wright.
