Craig Wright Committed “Grand Scale” Forgery And Lied To Court, Judge Rules
A UK judge has officially ruled that Craig Wright is guilty of forgery “on a grand scale” following the computer scientist’s decisive court loss in March.
In a written judgment published on Monday, High Court Justice James Mellor said Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” in court to support his “biggest lie” – his claim to be Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright’s Overwhelming Forgeries
“Dr. Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person,” wrote Mellor. “However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.”
The statement is a follow-up to Mellor’s decisive remarks immediately following a six-week trial against Wright earlier this year, after which he concluded Wright was not Bitcoin’s creator in response to “overwhelming” evidence against him.
Wright’s prosecutor was the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a consortium of major crypto industry firms aimed at protecting open-source developers and removing patents as a barrier to adoption. The group intended to put an end to Wright’s long history of defamation cases launched against his vocal online critics.
During the trial, COPA accused Wright of “industrial scale” forgery, presenting evidence of multiple fabricated documents previously used by Wright as evidence that he authored the Bitcoin white paper.
Wright dismissed all expert witnesses during the trial who testified that such documents showed evidence of forgery – including an expert hired by his own lawyers.
Lies, Forgery, and Technobabble
Under cross-examination, Wright failed to name any parties he’d sent Bitcoin to as ‘Satoshi’ who might be able to reinforce his claims. Later on, one of Wright’s personal witnesses – his sister – said she believed Wright was Satoshi because he liked Karate and was fond of Japanese names as a kid.
“Nothing in her evidence gave any credence to Dr.Wright’s claim to be Satoshi, and she did not support the assertion that he shared a pre-release portion of the Bitcoin whitepaper with her,” Mellor’s statement read.
The judge’s lengthy statement included the word “forgery” 130 times, “lie” 123 times, and “fraud” 19 times. Upon having those lies exposed. Mellor said Wright would usually resort to either redirecting blame for his predicament or outright “technobabble.”
“I was left with the clear impression that he simply engaged in technobabble precisely because he was not able to put forward any coherent explanation for the forgeries which had been exposed, and yet he could not bring himself to accept that he was responsible for them,” the judge concluded.
In a statement to Twitter on Monday, Wright said he intended to appeal the court’s decision concerning his identity. ” I would like to acknowledge and thank all my supporters for their unwavering encouragement and support,” he said.
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