Not the real Satoshi

Craig Wright’s claim of inventing bitcoin may get him arrested for perjury

UK judge refers Wright to prosecutors, suggests arrest warrant and extradition.

Jon Brodkin – Jul 16, 2024 2:58 pm | 79

Dr. Craig Wright arrives at the Rolls Building, part of the Royal Courts of Justice, on February 6, 2024, in London, England. Credit: Dan Kitwood / Staff | Getty Images News

A British judge is referring self-proclaimed bitcoin inventor Craig Wright to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider criminal charges of perjury and forgery. The judge said that CPS can decide whether Wright should be arrested and granted two injunctions that prohibit Wright from re-litigating his claim to be bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.

“I have no doubt that I should refer the relevant papers in this case to the CPS for consideration of whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr. Wright for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents and/or whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued and/or whether his extradition should be sought from wherever he now is. All those matters are to be decided by the CPS,” Justice James Mellor of England’s High Court of Justice wrote in a ruling issued today.

If Wright actually believes he is Nakamoto, “he is deluding himself,” Mellor wrote.

Mellor previously found that Wright “lied repeatedly and extensively” and forged documents “on a grand scale” in a case related to Wright’s claim that he is Nakamoto. The case began when Wright was sued by the nonprofit Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which said its goal was to disprove Wright’s bitcoin-inventing claim and stop him from claiming intellectual property rights to the system.

Wright’s location unknown

Wright’s location is unknown, today’s ruling said. “The evidence shows that Dr. Wright has left his previous residence in Wimbledon, appears to have left the UK, has been said to be traveling and was last established to be in the time zone of UTC +7,” Mellor wrote.

COPA asked Mellor “to dispense with personal service of the final Order on Dr. Wright” because his whereabouts are a mystery. COPA told the court that “Dr. Wright may either be deliberately evading service or at least is peripatetic and is very difficult to locate.” Mellor wrote that COPA’s view “seems to me to be fully justified and warrants the order which COPA seeks as to service of my final Order on Dr. Wright at his solicitors.”

After the events of the trial, Mellor’s decision to refer Wright for a perjury prosecution was apparently an easy one. “As COPA submitted, if what happened in this case does not warrant referral to the CPS, it is difficult to envisage a case which would… In advancing his false claim to be Satoshi through multiple legal actions, Dr. Wright committed ‘a most serious abuse’ of the process of the courts of the UK, Norway and the USA,” Mellor wrote.

Anti-lawsuit injunction

Mellor also approved COPA’s request for injunctions that prohibit Wright from bringing certain kinds of lawsuits based on his bitcoin-inventing claim. As the Associated Press reported, the approved injunctions are intended to prevent Wright “from threatening to sue or filing lawsuits aimed at developers.”

The COPA requests approved by Mellor were for “an anti-suit injunction preventing Dr. Wright or the other Claimants in the related claims from pursuing further proceedings in this or other jurisdictions to re-litigate his claim to be Satoshi,” and “a related order preventing him from threatening such proceedings.”

Mellor declined to issue additional orders preventing Wright from asserting legal rights as Nakamoto, preventing re-publication of Wright’s fraudulent claims, and requiring him to delete previously published statements. The judge said there was some overlap between the injunction requests that were approved and those that were not. Moreover, Wright would have difficulty convincing anyone that he invented bitcoin without violating the two approved injunctions.

Although there is a slight risk that “certain people may start to change their minds or begin to believe that Dr. Wright is Satoshi… I am inclined to the view that the effect would be small. Right-thinking people are likely to regard those assertions as hot air or empty rhetoric, even faintly ridiculous,” Mellor wrote.

Similarly, an order to delete statements “would be disproportionate” and is unnecessary because “anyone with an interest in Bitcoin will have been aware of the COPA Trial and know of the outcome,” Mellor wrote. However, the judge decided that COPA can make the requests again if it turns out to be necessary.

“I accept that my assessment may turn out to be off the mark. Furthermore, the evidence shows that whilst Dr. Wright has modified his public statements following the outcome of the COPA Trial, that may well turn out to be temporary. Dr. Wright is perfectly capable, once the dust has settled, of ramping up his public pronouncements again,” Mellor wrote.

Because of that possibility, Mellor said COPA has “permission to apply, for a period of 2 years, for any further injunctive relief they consider they can establish to be required to protect the interests of the corporate entities they represent as well as the individuals in the Bitcoin community who have suffered due to Dr. Wright’s false claim to be Satoshi.”

Listing image: Dan Kitwood / Staff | Getty Images News

Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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