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In a massive 93-page ruling, Federal Judge Beth Bloom, chucked out Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator and his final desperate attempts to arm wrestle out of a lawsuit seeing half of Satoshi Nakamoto’s $10 billions in Bitcoins. Wright is the Chief Scientist of nChain and has for long claimed to be Nakamoto that would open him to possession of the 1.1 Million BTC. Technically as of now, the amount is $11.5 billion and when the case was filed the value that floated was $1 billion.
The US District Court for the Southern District of Florida has carefully denied the motion of Craig to dismiss the Kleiman lawsuit on all parameters.
“The record reflects evidence from which a jury could conclude that Defendant enacted a scheme against Plaintiffs, abuse of a confidential or fiduciary relationship and that Plaintiffs were the “weaker party” in their dealings with him. See, e.g., ECF Nos. [83-20] (“The information I have to work with is what you have told me and the documents from the ATO office.”); [511-18] at 1 (“The frustrating part is not knowing what to believe. One moment I am told that you received funding for the next 5 years and are able to get back to work on building the business. And then the next second I am told there is no progress being made with the business because all your focus is on resolving the ATO disputes.”). Accordingly, the Court rejects Defendant’s assertion that Count VIII fails. As set forth above, Defendant’s Motion is denied on all grounds.”
No one, virtually no one in the crypto industry believes his claim. The estate of Wright’s late partner and at that time the Bitcoins were mined in the project’s early days. Dave Kleiman wants half, Ira Kleiman has sued the federal court for the Southern District of Florida for 5.5 million Bitcoins and half of Bitcoin intellectual property. The pre-trial discovery period dragged for 2 years mainly due to Wright’s antics and maneuvers. The Billion-dollar lawsuit is now headed towards trial worsening the legal position of the self-proclaimed Satoshi.
Washington-based lawyer Stephen D Palley believes that Wright is in a catch-22 situation and all his efforts to forgo the lawsuit will meet a dead end.
“Wright and his lawyers have made every effort to get out of the lawsuit, and it nearly ended once when a contempt ruling went the wrong way for him. This latest effort to get out of the case has also fallen exceptionally fault.”
Source: Twitter
In May, Wright filed a motion for summary judgement against Ira Kleiman. In his filing Wright described that Kleiman’s complaint was an extended version of fiction. In the August testimony, Lynn Wright, the former wife of self-proclaimed Satoshi backtracked on her claims about being the 1/3rd owner of her ex’s Tulip Trust. The legal battle started in 2018 after Wright was sued for stealing Dave’s Bitcoin holdings. The Kleiman estate has now okayed to return half of 1.1 Million BTC Wright allegedly mined with his partner before his death.