Judge in $10B Bitcoin Lawsuit Rips Craig Wright for No ‘Credible Evidence’
A Florida court dismissed self-proclaimed bitcoin inventor Craig Wright's motion to dismiss a $10B lawsuit filed by Dave Kleiman's estate. | Source: CoinGeek/YouTube
By CCN.com: A Florida federal court denied a motion by self-proclaimed bitcoin inventor Craig Wright challenging the court’s jurisdiction over the $10 billion lawsuit filed against him by the estate of Dave Kleiman.
In her ruling , Judge Beth Bloom said Wright failed to show that her court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the case. This means the lawsuit will move forward.
Judge: My court has the right to hear this case
In her order denying Wright’s motion, Bloom derisively pointed out several instances where the Australian crypto entrepreneur made conflicting statements about who were the owners of W&K Info Defense Research.
W&K was the Florida-based company that Wright and his former colleague, deceased computer genius Dave Kleiman, had collaborated on before Kleiman died in 2013.
According to the 2018 lawsuit filed against Wright by Dave’s brother, Ira Kleiman, Dave owned 50% to 100% of W&K. W&K presumably stands for the first letters of Wright and Kleiman’s surnames.
During their collaboration that started in 2008, the two friends worked on blockchain technologies and mined 1.1 million bitcoin. Wright never shared that massive bitcoin fortune with Kleiman’s estate after he died, according to the lawsuit.
Judge was annoyed by Craig Wright’s conflicting statements
Many on Crypto Twitter gleefully mocked Wright for losing his motion. However, the judge’s order doesn’t mean she has determined that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. The court order doesn’t even broach that topic.
That said, there were a number of instances where Judge Bloom expressed annoyance at what she considered conflicting statements made by Wright.
At one point, a testy Bloom cited Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott’s quote that “Oh! What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
Bloom was suggesting that Wright was not being honest about who were the members of W&K. Wright claimed in this latest motion that three additional parties were members of W&K:
- Craig’s ex-wife Lynn Wright.
- Uyen Nguyen, a Vietnamese national.
- Coin-Exch, an Australian corporation.
However, the judge concluded that Wright “failed to present any credible evidence showing that any of the parties he suggests are members of W&K.”
Moreover, she wrote that “the Court simply does not find the Defendant’s testimony to be credible” as to membership in W&K.
“This is not the first time that the Defendant has made certain representations regarding the membership of W&K. Indeed, the Court notes that the Defendant has made several conflicting statements regarding even his own ownership of W&K.”
Wright issues ominous warning
The Kleiman lawsuit is still in the early stages, and nothing substantive has really been adjudicated yet. Meanwhile, Craig Wright has been waxing philosophical on his personal blog.
In a recent entry, Wright suggested that he’ll wreak havoc once he comes into possession of the 1.1 million bitcoin he allegedly owns. When that happens on Jan. 1, 2020, Wright admonished the crypto industry to prepare for a potential bitcoin apocalypse.
“Bitcoin can be seized,” Wright warned. “In the coming year, you’re going to learn just how fragile the house of cards that is a criminal system built upon Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency really is.”
