Craig Wright Accuses Critics of Bugging His House, Spoofing Emails to Bring Him Back to Court
Wright returned to the stand in the U.K. COPA trial to defend accusations of forging doctoring emails he’d sent his former lawyers.
Mar 1, 2024 at 4:38 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/EA47BEGNDZCDZLRJMIHAUSCWIQ.jpg)
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- Craig Wright denied forging emails between him and his former lawyers on Friday during his last cross-examination in the COPA trial.
- The trial will resume on March 12 for closing statements.
Craig Wright accused critics of bugging his home and spoofing an email he’s been accused of doctoring during a Friday cross-examination in the U.K. trial probing his claims of having invented Bitcoin.
Spoofing involves changing the metadata of an email to – among other things – make it look like it was sent from a different address.
When asked by presiding Judge James Mellor if he could specify who did the spoofing, Wright said, “Unfortunately not. I suspect a number of people, My Lord.”
The Australian computer scientist has long maintained he’s Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous author of Bitcoin’s foundational document known as the whitepaper. A group of industry participants called the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and several Bitcoin developers filed suit against Wright, alleging he’d committed forgeries of an “industrial scale” in trying to prove he’s Satoshi.
On Friday, Wright vehemently denied accusations made by COPA of backdating the email in question to support a statement he’d made in court the previous week concerning his former legal representatives at Ontier.
Wright instead blamed the timestamp and other discrepancies on email spoofing, spam folders, domain migrations, surveillance and hacking.
Judge Mellor asked why someone seeking Wright’s downfall would doctor an email to support something he’d said, to which Wright replied, “Oh, no. It doesn’t support.”
He said that the email was doctored by a malicious actor to fabricate an excuse to bring him back to court.
After Wright, COPA’s expert witness Patrick Madden returned to the stand to defend his new analysis of the Ontier emails. Wright’s counsel sought to establish spoofing was an easy thing to do.
When asked by Wright’s lawyer Craig Orr if the email could have been spoofed, Madden said he didn’t think it was.
“I do not think it’s practical to consider that,” Madden said.
Friday was the last day for discussing evidence. The trial will resume on March 12 for closing statements from both sides.
Camomile Shumba contributed reporting.
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Sandali Handagama is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for policy and regulations, EMEA. She does not own any crypto.