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Interim ruling by the judge in Kleinbold v Craig Wright
TLDR: Judge rules that CSW is a lying shithead.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536.277.0.pdf
TLDR: Judge rules that CSW is a lying shithead.
Quote
Dr. Wright’s story not only was not supported by other evidence in the record, it defies common sense and real-life experience. Consider his claims. He designed Bitcoin to be an anonymous digital cash system with an evidentiary trail. DE 236 at 15. He mined approximately 1,000,000 bitcoin, but there is no accessible evidentiary trail for the vast majority of them. He is a latter-day Dr. Frankenstein whose creation turned to evil when hijacked by drug dealers, human traffickers, and other criminals. Id. at 16-17. To save himself, he engaged David Kleiman to remove all traces of his involvement with Bitcoin from the public record. Id. at 16. As part of his efforts to disassociate from Bitcoin and “so that I wouldn’t be in trouble,” he put all his bitcoin (and/or the keys to it – his story changed) into a computer file that is encrypted with a hierarchical Shamir encryption protocol. See Id. at 23. He then put the encrypted file into a “blind” trust (of which he is one of the trustees), gave away a controlling number of the key slices to now-deceased David Kleiman, and therefore cannot now decrypt the file that controls access to the bitcoin. His only hope is that a bonded courier arrives on an unknown dated in January 2020 with the decryption keys. If the courier does not appear, Dr. Wright has lost his ability to access billions of dollars worth of bitcoin, and he does not care. Id. at 21-22. Inconceivable.
During his testimony, Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth. When it was favorable to him, Dr. Wright appeared to have an excellent memory and a scrupulous attention to detail. Otherwise, Dr. Wright was belligerent and evasive.
He did not directly and clearly respond to questions. He quibbled about irrelevant technicalities. When confronted with evidence indicating that certain documents had been fabricated or altered, he became extremely defensive, tried to sidestep questioning, and ultimately made vague comments about his systems being hacked and others having access to his computers. None of these excuses were corroborated by other evidence.
Sadly, Dr. Wright does not write on a clean slate. As Judge Bloom recently noted in denying Dr. Wright’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, Dr. Wright has taken directly conflicting factual positions at different times during this litigation. DE 265 at 10 (“[T]he record is replete with instances in which the Defendant has proffered conflicting sworn testimony before this Court.). As discussed below, that behavior continued before me.
Dr. Wright has a substantial stake in the outcome of the case. If Plaintiffs succeed on their claims, Dr. Wright stands to lose billions of dollars. That gives him a powerful motive not to identify his bitcoin. As long as the relevant addresses remain secret, he can transfer the bitcoin without the Plaintiffs being able to find them. After all, Bitcoin is an anonymous cybercurrency.
Similarly, Dr. Wright had many reasons not to tell the truth. Most notably, Dr. Wright might want to prevent the Plaintiffs (or others) from finding his Bitcoin trove. Alternatively, there was evidence indicating that relevant documents were altered in or about 2014, when the Australian Tax Office was investigating one of Dr. Wright’s companies. Perhaps Dr. Wright’s testimony here is motivated by certain legal and factual positions he took in the Australian Tax Office investigation and from which he cannot now recede.
There was substantial credible evidence that documents produced by Dr. Wright to support his position in this litigation are fraudulent. There was credible and compelling evidence that documents had been altered. Other documents are contradicted by Dr. Wright’s testimony or declaration.
While it is true that there was no direct evidence that Dr. Wright was responsible for alterations or falsification of documents, there is no evidence before the Court that anyone else had a motive to falsify them. As such, there is a strong, and unrebutted, circumstantial inference that Dr. Wright willfully created the fraudulent documents.
One example is the Deed of Trust document for the Tulip Trust. Among the trust assets identified in the purported Deed of Trust creating the Tulip Trust on October 23, 2012, are “All Bitcoin and associated ledger assets transferred into Tulip Trading Ltd by Mr David Kleiman on Friday, 10th June 2011 following transfer to Mr Kleiman by Dr Wright on the 09th June 2011 . . .This incles [sic] the 1,200,111 Bitcoin held under the former arrangement and the attached conditions.” P. Ex. 9 at 2.
Notably absent from the list of trust assets is any encrypted file, software, public or private keys. The Deed of Trust states that the parties forming the Tulip Trust are Wright International Investments Ltd and Tulip Trading Ltd. Id. at 1. There was credible and conclusive evidence at the hearing that Dr. Wright did not control Tulip Trading Ltd. until 2014. P. Exs. 11-14; DE 236 at 88-96. Moreover, computer forensic analysis indicated that the Deed of Trust presented to the Court was backdated. The totality of the evidence in the record does not substantiate that the Tulip Trust exists. Combining these facts with my observations of Dr. Wright’s demeanor during his testimony, I find that Dr. Wright’s testimony that this Trust exists was intentionally false.11
Dr. Wright’s false testimony about the Tulip Trust was part of a sustained and concerted effort to impede discovery into his bitcoin holdings. Start with Dr. Wright’s deceptive and incomplete discovery pleadings. He testified at the evidentiary hearing that at least as early as December 2018 he knew that he could not provide a listing of his bitcoin holdings. Yet, the Court was not told this “fact” until April 18, 2019. I give Dr. Wright the benefit of the doubt that prior to May 14 the Plaintiffs were seeking information that went beyond a list of his bitcoin holdings on December 31, 2013.
After the May 14 discovery hearing, however, Dr. Wright was aware that the Court expected him to provide Plaintiffs with sufficient information so those bitcoin holdings could be traced.
Nevertheless, having failed to hold off discovery on legal grounds, after March 14, Dr. Wright changed course and started making affirmative misleading factual statements to the Court. His April 18 Motion argued for the first time, “In 2011, Dr. Wright transferred ownership of all his Bitcoin into a blind trust. Dr. Wright is not a trustee or beneficiary of the blind trust. Nor does Dr. Wright know any of the public addresses which hold any of the bitcoin in the blind trust. Thus, Dr. Wright, does not know and cannot provide any other public addresses.” This pleading was intended to communicate the impression that Dr. Wright had no remaining connection to the bitcoin. It was also intended to create the impression that the bitcoin themselves had been transferred to the trust. 12
Dr. Wright almost immediately made irreconcilable statements about the Tulip Trust. The April 18 Motion stated it was a blind trust and he was not a trustee. His sworn declaration three weeks later stated that he is one of the trustees of the Tulip Trust.
The trust can hardly be considered “blind” (as represented in the April 18 Motion) if Dr. Wright is one of the trustees. At least one set of these representations about the trust and Dr. Wright’s status as a trustee necessarily is intentionally misleading.
Dr. Wright also changed his story about what is in the alleged trust. The April 18 Motion states that Dr. Wright’s bitcoin had been transferred to a blind trust, and therefore are owned by the trusts, not by Dr. Wright. The Court gave Dr. Wright an extension of time so he could meet with his counsel to draft and file a declaration about the trust. In the May 8 declaration, he swore that he met with counsel and that he provided counsel “with additional details and clarity regarding trusts that I settled that hold or held Bitcoin that I mined or acquired on or before December 31, 2013.” DE 222 at ¶ 3 (emphasis added). He further swore, “In June 2011, I took steps to consolidate the Bitcoin I mined with Bitcoin that I acquired and other assets. In October 2012, a formal trust document was executed, creating a trust whose corpus included the Bitcoin that I mined, acquired and would acquire in the future. The name of that trust is Tulip Trust. It was formed in the Seycelles [sic].” Id. at ¶ 5 (emphasis added).
His declaration was unequivocal that the trust held bitcoin. Nevertheless, at his deposition on June 26 (and at the evidentiary hearing), he changed his story to say that the trust contained an encrypted file with the keys to the bitcoin, not the bitcoin itself.
The hearing testimony that the trust holds only keys, not bitcoin, cannot be reconciled with the statements in the April 18 Motion and the May 8 declaration that it contains bitcoin. At least one of these representations is intentionally false. During his testimony at the evidentiary hearing, Dr. Wright made a point of being precise in his use of terms, including contesting whether a document was an email or a pdf of an email. It is not credible that, given his claim to have an unmatched understanding of Bitcoin, he would have mistaken the Bitcoin currency for the keys that control the ability to transfer the currency. I find instead that he belatedly realized that any transaction(s) transferring bitcoin into the alleged Tulip Trust would be reflected on the Bitcoin master blockchain, that he would then be required to identify those transaction(s), and that Plaintiffs could use that information to trace the bitcoin.
So, Dr. Wright changed his story to say that only the keys had been transferred.
Ultimately, Dr. Wright’s claim of inability to comply with the Court’s Orders relies on the existence of an encrypted file in the Tulip Trust containing the information necessary to reconstruct Dr. Wright’s bitcoin holdings. I find that this file does not exist.
Dr. Wright testified this file is an encrypted compressed file containing multiple sub-files. He swore, “Each of those files has a differently calculated encryption key . . . It’s a hierarchical system, where, based on a combination of the file hash and the original encryption key – there are a variety of those – there are multiple Shamir schemes.” DE 236 at 107. The Shamir scheme divides a single encryption key into multiple key slices; some subset of the total key slices is needed to decrypt the file.13 Dr. Wright testified that 15 key slices existed for the outermost file, only eight key slices were needed to decrypt this file, but he only had access to seven key slices. DE 236 at 125-26; see also DE 236 at 114 (“The eight of 15 is the key that we’re talking about to regenerate all of the addresses”). After observing Dr. Wright’s demeanor and the lack of any other credible evidence in the record that this file exists, I find that a preponderance of the evidence establishes that no such file exists and that Dr. Wright’s testimony was intentionally false.
During his testimony, Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth. When it was favorable to him, Dr. Wright appeared to have an excellent memory and a scrupulous attention to detail. Otherwise, Dr. Wright was belligerent and evasive.
He did not directly and clearly respond to questions. He quibbled about irrelevant technicalities. When confronted with evidence indicating that certain documents had been fabricated or altered, he became extremely defensive, tried to sidestep questioning, and ultimately made vague comments about his systems being hacked and others having access to his computers. None of these excuses were corroborated by other evidence.
Sadly, Dr. Wright does not write on a clean slate. As Judge Bloom recently noted in denying Dr. Wright’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, Dr. Wright has taken directly conflicting factual positions at different times during this litigation. DE 265 at 10 (“[T]he record is replete with instances in which the Defendant has proffered conflicting sworn testimony before this Court.). As discussed below, that behavior continued before me.
Dr. Wright has a substantial stake in the outcome of the case. If Plaintiffs succeed on their claims, Dr. Wright stands to lose billions of dollars. That gives him a powerful motive not to identify his bitcoin. As long as the relevant addresses remain secret, he can transfer the bitcoin without the Plaintiffs being able to find them. After all, Bitcoin is an anonymous cybercurrency.
Similarly, Dr. Wright had many reasons not to tell the truth. Most notably, Dr. Wright might want to prevent the Plaintiffs (or others) from finding his Bitcoin trove. Alternatively, there was evidence indicating that relevant documents were altered in or about 2014, when the Australian Tax Office was investigating one of Dr. Wright’s companies. Perhaps Dr. Wright’s testimony here is motivated by certain legal and factual positions he took in the Australian Tax Office investigation and from which he cannot now recede.
There was substantial credible evidence that documents produced by Dr. Wright to support his position in this litigation are fraudulent. There was credible and compelling evidence that documents had been altered. Other documents are contradicted by Dr. Wright’s testimony or declaration.
While it is true that there was no direct evidence that Dr. Wright was responsible for alterations or falsification of documents, there is no evidence before the Court that anyone else had a motive to falsify them. As such, there is a strong, and unrebutted, circumstantial inference that Dr. Wright willfully created the fraudulent documents.
One example is the Deed of Trust document for the Tulip Trust. Among the trust assets identified in the purported Deed of Trust creating the Tulip Trust on October 23, 2012, are “All Bitcoin and associated ledger assets transferred into Tulip Trading Ltd by Mr David Kleiman on Friday, 10th June 2011 following transfer to Mr Kleiman by Dr Wright on the 09th June 2011 . . .This incles [sic] the 1,200,111 Bitcoin held under the former arrangement and the attached conditions.” P. Ex. 9 at 2.
Notably absent from the list of trust assets is any encrypted file, software, public or private keys. The Deed of Trust states that the parties forming the Tulip Trust are Wright International Investments Ltd and Tulip Trading Ltd. Id. at 1. There was credible and conclusive evidence at the hearing that Dr. Wright did not control Tulip Trading Ltd. until 2014. P. Exs. 11-14; DE 236 at 88-96. Moreover, computer forensic analysis indicated that the Deed of Trust presented to the Court was backdated. The totality of the evidence in the record does not substantiate that the Tulip Trust exists. Combining these facts with my observations of Dr. Wright’s demeanor during his testimony, I find that Dr. Wright’s testimony that this Trust exists was intentionally false.11
Dr. Wright’s false testimony about the Tulip Trust was part of a sustained and concerted effort to impede discovery into his bitcoin holdings. Start with Dr. Wright’s deceptive and incomplete discovery pleadings. He testified at the evidentiary hearing that at least as early as December 2018 he knew that he could not provide a listing of his bitcoin holdings. Yet, the Court was not told this “fact” until April 18, 2019. I give Dr. Wright the benefit of the doubt that prior to May 14 the Plaintiffs were seeking information that went beyond a list of his bitcoin holdings on December 31, 2013.
After the May 14 discovery hearing, however, Dr. Wright was aware that the Court expected him to provide Plaintiffs with sufficient information so those bitcoin holdings could be traced.
Nevertheless, having failed to hold off discovery on legal grounds, after March 14, Dr. Wright changed course and started making affirmative misleading factual statements to the Court. His April 18 Motion argued for the first time, “In 2011, Dr. Wright transferred ownership of all his Bitcoin into a blind trust. Dr. Wright is not a trustee or beneficiary of the blind trust. Nor does Dr. Wright know any of the public addresses which hold any of the bitcoin in the blind trust. Thus, Dr. Wright, does not know and cannot provide any other public addresses.” This pleading was intended to communicate the impression that Dr. Wright had no remaining connection to the bitcoin. It was also intended to create the impression that the bitcoin themselves had been transferred to the trust. 12
Dr. Wright almost immediately made irreconcilable statements about the Tulip Trust. The April 18 Motion stated it was a blind trust and he was not a trustee. His sworn declaration three weeks later stated that he is one of the trustees of the Tulip Trust.
The trust can hardly be considered “blind” (as represented in the April 18 Motion) if Dr. Wright is one of the trustees. At least one set of these representations about the trust and Dr. Wright’s status as a trustee necessarily is intentionally misleading.
Dr. Wright also changed his story about what is in the alleged trust. The April 18 Motion states that Dr. Wright’s bitcoin had been transferred to a blind trust, and therefore are owned by the trusts, not by Dr. Wright. The Court gave Dr. Wright an extension of time so he could meet with his counsel to draft and file a declaration about the trust. In the May 8 declaration, he swore that he met with counsel and that he provided counsel “with additional details and clarity regarding trusts that I settled that hold or held Bitcoin that I mined or acquired on or before December 31, 2013.” DE 222 at ¶ 3 (emphasis added). He further swore, “In June 2011, I took steps to consolidate the Bitcoin I mined with Bitcoin that I acquired and other assets. In October 2012, a formal trust document was executed, creating a trust whose corpus included the Bitcoin that I mined, acquired and would acquire in the future. The name of that trust is Tulip Trust. It was formed in the Seycelles [sic].” Id. at ¶ 5 (emphasis added).
His declaration was unequivocal that the trust held bitcoin. Nevertheless, at his deposition on June 26 (and at the evidentiary hearing), he changed his story to say that the trust contained an encrypted file with the keys to the bitcoin, not the bitcoin itself.
The hearing testimony that the trust holds only keys, not bitcoin, cannot be reconciled with the statements in the April 18 Motion and the May 8 declaration that it contains bitcoin. At least one of these representations is intentionally false. During his testimony at the evidentiary hearing, Dr. Wright made a point of being precise in his use of terms, including contesting whether a document was an email or a pdf of an email. It is not credible that, given his claim to have an unmatched understanding of Bitcoin, he would have mistaken the Bitcoin currency for the keys that control the ability to transfer the currency. I find instead that he belatedly realized that any transaction(s) transferring bitcoin into the alleged Tulip Trust would be reflected on the Bitcoin master blockchain, that he would then be required to identify those transaction(s), and that Plaintiffs could use that information to trace the bitcoin.
So, Dr. Wright changed his story to say that only the keys had been transferred.
Ultimately, Dr. Wright’s claim of inability to comply with the Court’s Orders relies on the existence of an encrypted file in the Tulip Trust containing the information necessary to reconstruct Dr. Wright’s bitcoin holdings. I find that this file does not exist.
Dr. Wright testified this file is an encrypted compressed file containing multiple sub-files. He swore, “Each of those files has a differently calculated encryption key . . . It’s a hierarchical system, where, based on a combination of the file hash and the original encryption key – there are a variety of those – there are multiple Shamir schemes.” DE 236 at 107. The Shamir scheme divides a single encryption key into multiple key slices; some subset of the total key slices is needed to decrypt the file.13 Dr. Wright testified that 15 key slices existed for the outermost file, only eight key slices were needed to decrypt this file, but he only had access to seven key slices. DE 236 at 125-26; see also DE 236 at 114 (“The eight of 15 is the key that we’re talking about to regenerate all of the addresses”). After observing Dr. Wright’s demeanor and the lack of any other credible evidence in the record that this file exists, I find that a preponderance of the evidence establishes that no such file exists and that Dr. Wright’s testimony was intentionally false.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536.277.0.pdf
The testimony is 'false' but just in case there is a 'Tulip Fund' he is still on the hook for the $2 Billion Dollars in BTC if he has access to such funds?
or
He has to pay the estate $2 Billion Dollars because they can prove he ripped off the Bitcoin?
or
Nothing comes of this, because when the time comes to pay (after 1/1/2020) Craig Wright (FakeSatoshi) will announce the 'evil' trustees of the
'supposed' Tulip Fund, has run off with the private keys and as such, as usual, he will 'claim' his bad luck and innocence and move onward and ever forward
with his fake claim to be Satoshi.
I mean, on any of the above is there any real consequences? (I refuse to believe he can pay the estate that is just too far fetched) but on his flat out lies?
Seems little or NO consequences in that this is a USA court and he is Australian.
Anyone, want to show me how he can be hung out to dry on his claims and/or how he can continue to get away with this scam, feel free to reply.
I've already heard from Craig Wright believers that because the court says he has to pay, regardless if he has/can find/or whatever with the BTC private keys,
he must be Satoshi! (the mind cringes from the lack of logic)
Anyway, seems to be still a muddled mess, he can squeak his way out of without any real consequences to his continued lies.
Brad
