Craig Wright, an early Bitcoin pioneer who claims to be the cryptocurrency’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto, presented what appeared to be fabricated documents in a court hearing this week according trial lawyer Stephen Palley.
Palley alleged on his Twitter feed that documents presented to a Florida court in the case of Wright versus the family of his former business partner David Kleiman to contain chronological errors that prove the documents to be false.
Case Background
Ira Kleiman, the brother of now-deceased David, accuses Wright of defrauding his partner out of potentially hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins following his death in April 2013.
In June, the court ordered Wright to provide it with a list of his Bitcoin holdings prior to December 31, 2013. Wright failed to comply with the order and on Friday, June 28 Wright attended a contempt hearing where he called three expert witnesses to testify.
Claims of Falsified Documents
Among the exhibits filed by Wright at the District Court for Florida South on July 3, was a document that aimed to prove that Wright and Kleiman had co-operated in mutual trust to “form a partnership in order to best exploit and utilise their joint assets”.
The document was dated October 23, 2012, but the team supporting plaintiff lawyer Stephen Pally found, on examination of the document’s metadata, that the font used – Calibri – had an updated copyright notice for 2015, indicating the document was written several years after Wright claims.
a purported 2012 trust doc with font files copyrighted 2015 pic.twitter.com/Gi66glsESh
— Palley (@stephendpalley) July 3, 2019
Meanwhile, the counsel for the plaintiff presented two versions of a separate document that would appear to prove co-operation between Kleiman and Wright – one dated 2011 and the other 2014.
Palley Tweeted thus:
I mean it makes sense that the inventor of bitcoin can time travel.
Your honor.
— Palley (@stephendpalley) July 3, 2019
Contempt Decision Awaited
What this means for Wright is, as yet, unknown. He is currently waiting to hear whether or not the court finds him in civil or even criminal contempt of court for his failure to present requested evidence.
Pally said on his Twitter feed that at the moment the merits of the Kleiman vs Wright case are not the issue. “At issue is compliance with lawful court orders. Also if the judge thinks you are a liar, the judge can disregard your testimony and you can face jail.”
Civil contempt doesn't necessarily have to do with the merits of the case, whether you or right or wrong or should win or lose. At issue is compliance with lawful court orders. Also If the judge thinks you are liar, the judge can disregard your testimony and you can face jail.
— Palley (@stephendpalley) July 4, 2019
We wait to see if Wright has any comeback to these allegations of falsifying documents, and what the outcome of the contempt hearing will be.
