'Bitcoin inventor' sued for $5 billion scam

Wright claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin

According to Bloomberg on February 27 Beijing time, Craig Wright, who claims to be the "inventor of Bitcoin", is now accused of defrauding a computer security expert of $5 billion worth of Bitcoin and other assets.

Wright, who claimed in 2016 that he invented Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi ‎Nakamoto, is now accused of conspiring to use fake contracts and signatures to take possession of Bitcoin mined by colleague Dave Kleiman, a fellow cryptocurrency believer who died in 2013. The lawsuit was filed by Kleiman’s brother.

The lawsuit, filed on February 14 in the federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida, shows that Kleiman's family claims that they own more than 1 million bitcoins mined by Kleiman during his lifetime and the blockchain technology he developed, with the value of these assets exceeding $5 billion.

“Wright forged a series of contracts purporting to transfer Kleiman’s assets to Wright and/or companies he controlled,” Kleiman’s family’s lawyers said in the lawsuit. “Wright backdated these contracts and forged Kleiman’s signature on them.”

Wright, an Australian living in London who has not yet commented, is also accused of violating his duty to work with Kleiman and illegally enriching himself at the expense of his colleagues.

Court documents show that Wright and Kleiman established a company in Florida in 2011, W&K Info Defense Research LLC, which focuses on cybersecurity. The two also worked together to develop Bitcoin and did a lot of mining. The lawsuit states that when Kleiman died, the two controlled up to 1.1 million Bitcoins and were in charge of several trusts established in Singapore, the Seychelles and the United Kingdom.

Wright, who has said in 2016 blog posts and interviews that he was a key player in the team that developed the original bitcoin software under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, said he would not offer more evidence to prove he invented bitcoin after skeptics cast doubt on his claims.

In the indictment, Kleiman’s brother released emails he purportedly exchanged with Wright in which Wright suggested he may have 300,000 bitcoins belonging to Kleiman.

“He mentioned you had 1 million bitcoins in a trust, and since you said he owned 300,000 of them,” Kleiman’s brother said, “I assume the other 700,000 are yours, correct?”

"That's about right," Wright replied, "minus the amount needed to run the company."