“An Australian computer scientist who claimed he invented bitcoin faces a criminal investigation in Britain for alleged perjury after he was found to have repeatedly lied and forged documents to support his false claim.

Judge James Mellor ruled in March that the evidence Wright was not Satoshi was “overwhelming”, saying in a written judgment in May that Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” and forged documents “on a grand scale” during the case.

The judge said in a further ruling on Tuesday that he was referring Wright to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service to consider “whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents”.

Mellor also said that prosecutors should consider “whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued and/or whether his extradition should be sought from wherever he now is”.

His current whereabouts are unknown and Mellor said in Tuesday’s ruling: “The evidence shows that Dr Wright has left his previous residence in Wimbledon (in London), appears to have left the UK, has been said to be travelling and was last established to be in the time zone of UTC +7.”

The time zone includes locations in southeast Asia and Russia’s Siberia.”

Read the full story at Reuters

“Craig Wright, who claimed to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to be considered for perjury charges for evidence he presented in a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance.

COPA, a non-profit organization representing bitcoin developers, filed suit against Wright in 2021 for a once-and-for-all ruling that he is not Nakamoto, to prevent him from claiming copyright of the Bitcoin whitepaper and to stop him suing Bitcoin developers while purporting to be Nakamoto. COPA is funded by leading industry figures and companies including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and crypto exchange Coinbase.

In March, presiding judge James Mellor ruled that Wright was not Nakamoto, and in a May judgment said Wright had lied extensively throughout the case. In a filing today, he said U.K. prosecutors should consider whether Wright should be tried for perjury.

“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,” Mellor wrote in the court document. “All those matters are to be decided by the CPS.”

Mellor also said evidence from Stefan Matthews, one of Wright’s witnesses during the trial, should be referred to the CPS.

“So far as Mr. Matthews is concerned, it is true, as COPA submitted, that he has been a major player in Dr. Wright’s campaign to establish himself as Satoshi for many years, and in that capacity, has been a significant supporter and purveyor of that lie,” Mellor said.”

Read the full story at CoinDesk

“An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to have invented Bitcoin has been referred to UK prosecutors for alleged perjury.

A judge at London’s High Court found Dr Craig Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” to support his claim that he was “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the pseudonym attributed to the person widely credited with creating the cryptocurrency.

Dr Wright was sued by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), a non-profit group that includes cryptocurrency firms, to stop him suing Bitcoin developers.

Judge James Mellor ruled in March that the evidence Dr Wright was not Satoshi was “overwhelming”, after a five-week civil trial during which the group claimed he committed “forgery on an industrial scale” to support a “brazen lie”.

In a written ruling today, the judge said he was referring the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider prosecution over potential perjury and forgery.”

Read the full story at SkyNews

“An Australian computer scientist who was found by a High Court judge in London to have falsely claimed to have invented bitcoin could face a criminal investigation for alleged perjury.

Craig Wright, 53, had publicly claimed to be the true figure behind Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the 2008 academic paper that serves as the foundational text for the cryptocurrency.

Mr Justice Mellor ruled in March there was “overwhelming” evidence that Wright was not Satoshi and in a later written judgement said that Wright had “lied to the court extensively and repeatedly”. The judge said he was satisfied that some of the evidence he had supplied had been “forged on a grand scale”.

In a further ruling on Tuesday the judge said he was referring Wright to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider “whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents”.

The judge added that prosecutors should consider “whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued and/or whether his extradition should be sought from wherever he now is”.”

Read the full story at the Times

“The case of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery.

In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” Mellor said at the time, “that Dr Wright is not the author of the bitcoin white paper.” In the written judgment that followed, Mellor said that Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” in written and oral evidence. “Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim … Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this court’s process.”

Wright’s written evidence was called out as a potential forgery before the trial even opened, and his own expert witnesses appeared to concur. In cross-examination, Wright dismissed the allegations, and claimed his expert witness was not suitably qualified. “If I had forged that document then it would be perfect,” he said at one point.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Mellor said he would refer “relevant” papers in the legal action to the CPS to consider whether criminal charges should be brought against Wright.”

Read the full story at the Guardian

“A” judge in the UK High Court has directed prosecutors to consider bringing criminal charges against computer scientist Craig Wright, after ruling that he lied “extensively and repeatedly” and committed forgery “on a grand scale” in service of his quest to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin.

In a judgment published Tuesday, Justice James Mellor outlined various injunctions to be imposed upon Wright, after finding in May that he had “engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims [to be Satoshi] and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud.”

By order of the judge, Wright will be prevented from claiming publicly that he is Satoshi and from bringing or threatening legal action in any jurisdiction on that basis. He will be required to pin a notice to the front page of his personal website and X feed detailing the findings against him.”

Read the full story at WIRED

“The cryptocurrency entrepreneur whose false claim to be bitcoin inventor ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ has filled more than 80 days of court hearings should be prosecuted for perjury, the High Court heard yesterday.

Dr Craig Wright had mounted a five-year campaign of ‘litigation terrorism’, Jonathan Hough KC told a one-day hearing following Mr Justice Mellor’s ruling last month that the Satoshi claim was fabricated. In defending his position Wright produced hundreds of forged documents and made ‘literally thousands of lies under oath’, Hough said. ‘If there were ever a case for a referral of the papers to the authorities with a view to prosecution, it is that of Dr Wright in this case.’

Hough, for the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), asked the judge for injunctive relief, including, as well as costs on the indemnity basis:

• an anti-suit injunction preventing Wright from attempting to re-litigate the case
• an order requiring Wright to disseminate the Mellor judgment
• the court’s permission to re-use disclosed documents in the case
• a refusal of permission to appeal
• referral of the case to the Crown Prosecution Service.

For Wright, Craig Orr KC argued that many of the ‘unprecendented’ terms sought by COPA were unnecessary. Rather, they were ’motivated by a desire for revenge and a desire to punish and humiliate Dr Wright’, he said. Any order barring Wright from repeating his claim to be ‘Satoshi’ would infringe his article 10 right to free speech, Orr said. He told the judge that, even following a criminal conviction for a serious crime, it would ’be unheard of to injunct a defendant against asserting their innocence’. 

Meanwhile Wright had no intention of threatening or pursuing future proceedings, ’and no wish to waste time and resources debating the point’.

However the court heard that on the very day of the hearing, Wright had posted a YouTube video in which he referred to authoring the seminal ‘Satosh’ white paper first describing bitcoin.”

Read the full story at the Law Society Gazette

“The Crypto Open Patent Alliance’s (COPA) legal representatives on Friday asked Judge James Mellor to grant that Craig Wright pay 85% of the costs the group incurred in the legal proceedings.

Jonathan Hough, one of COPA’s legal representatives, asked that Wright be given a civil restraint order to stop him from pursuing any other legal court cases, because “he has poured out threats.” COPA also offered to submit a list of online posts that Wright should take down.

Hough said that this case should also be put forward for criminal proceedings following the courts judgement that Wright committed multiple forgeries during the trial. The Bitcoin developers who joined this case also asked that Wright pay for 85.2% of their costs.

Unless Wright was prevented from doing so, he would continue to “propagate lies,” Hough argued.

“There is a powerful public interest in them [lies] being brought to an end now,” Hough said, pointing to the litigation that spanned more than five years that Wright had brought against COPA members such as Coinbase Inc. (COIN) and Kraken, among others.”

Read the full story at CoinDesk

“The High Court has ruled that a computer scientist lied ‘extensively and repeatedly’ in a failed bid to claim he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym attributed to the person credited with creating Bitcoin. 

Dr Craig Wright lost a legal battle with the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), a non-profit group including cryptocurrency firms, in March after the group claimed he committed ‘forgery on an industrial scale’ to support a ‘brazen lie’ that he was Satoshi.

Following a five-week trial, High Court judge Mr Justice Mellor ruled that there was ‘overwhelming’ evidence to prove that the Australian was not behind the pseudonym, and had not written the cryptocurrency’s founding document, known as the Bitcoin White Paper.

In written reasons for his decision, handed down on Monday, the judge said that he was ‘entirely satisfied’ that Dr Wright repeatedly lied and committed ‘clumsy’ forgeries ‘on a grand scale’ to support his claims.

He said: ‘Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.”

Read the full story at Daily Mail

“Dr. Wright had a financial interest in squelching their work: He and a gambling tycoon had joined forces to promote an alternative digital currency, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, that they claimed was a pure, uncorrupted version of Bitcoin, with better practical applications.

This year, Bitcoin’s price surged to an all-time high, renewing optimism that crypto is destined for widespread adoption. But the industry is still tarnished by a procession of recent financial scandals that cost investors billions in savings. The mystery of Satoshi is the last remnant of a more innocent time in its history, when crypto was a renegade, communal system that seemed to have materialized out of thin air.

Dr. Wright’s claim to Satoshi-dom wasn’t simply an antagonistic legal strategy: It was a threat to the purity of that founding myth. This year, several of crypto’s most powerful companies mobilized to stop Dr. Wright from bringing cases. An influential group led by Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, and Block, a company started by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, took him to trial in High Court in London.

They were seeking a judicial declaration: We may never know for sure who invented Bitcoin, but it wasn’t Craig Wright.

As the trial reached its conclusion in March, a few of Dr. Wright’s supporters, mostly investors in Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, gathered in the courtroom to watch his final stand. Mr. Ayre was not among them. He had written some supportive messages for Dr. Wright on X, but he spent the morning of closing arguments in a pool, drinking beer and posting clips from “The Godfather” on social media.

As Dr. Wright’s legal team tried to address the forgery claims, Mr. Ayre began texting a New York Times reporter. “Drunk and happy,” he wrote in one of dozens of typo-riddled messages. (The texts came from a number that Mr. Ayre had used in the past; it was later disconnected.)

The trial was “old powers wanting to slow innovation,” Mr. Ayre wrote. He used a series of vulgar expressions to describe his business rivals and said only a “moron” would disbelieve Dr. Wright.

“Craig is Satoshi,” Mr. Ayre declared. “He is also 14 year old kid.”

A few minutes later, the judge overseeing the proceedings, James Mellor, issued a ruling from the bench. “Dr. Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto,” he said.

Crypto fans celebrated online, proclaiming the end of a “reign of terror.” Mr. Dorsey, the Twitter founder, posted the full text of Justice Mellor’s ruling. In a closing submission, COPA’s lawyers called for the court papers to be forwarded to British prosecutors, who could investigate whether Dr. Wright had committed perjury.

This week, Justice Mellor elaborated on his conclusions in a 231-page ruling, finding that Dr. Wright had forged numerous documents. “He is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is,” Justice Mellor wrote. Dr. Wright has already dropped his defamation claim, as well as one suit he filed against Bitcoin developers. But a message posted to his X account on Monday said he planned to appeal the COPA ruling.”

Read the full story at the New York Times