Self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator accused of $5 billion crypto heist
The brother of a deceased Florida man has sued Craig Wright, an Australian best known for initially claiming in 2016 (but ultimately failing to definitively prove) that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s mythical creator.
In this new lawsuit, Wright is accused of effectively swindling Dave Kleiman’s estate—his brother Ira Kleiman is the one who has filed the case—out of a massive cache of bitcoins that today are worth more than $5 billion.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in West Palm Beach on February 14, and it was first reported by Vice Motherboard and Bloomberg on Tuesday. Dave Kleiman, a well-known computer forensics investigator who died in 2013, may have been involved in the real origin of Bitcoin itself. Gizmodo outlined the links between the men in a substantive May 2016 article.