5 ms·

'Satoshi' impersonation 'a serious abuse of court's process' judge concludes

108 points by geox 2y ago

skilled 2y ago
This was discussed yesterday a bit also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629 I don’t fully understand the last sentence in this article, is this guy going to be punished for being a fraud or is that not how it works?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  I'd expect some of that injunctive relief to include his paying the other side's substantial legal fees.
  - nerdawson 2y ago
    He's had his assets frozen to ensure he can't get out of paying the legal fees: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/bitcoin-high-court-london-b1151135.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/bitcoin-high-court-lon... The norm, as far as I'm aware, is that the losing side is on the hook for the winner's legal fees. Seems like a pretty good deterrent against bringing frivolous claims.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      Some pros, some cons. It can exacerbate power imbalances; Google can afford to be on the hook for a $20M legal team, but you probably can't.
      - chaorace 2y ago
        The policy probably made more sense back when $20M legal teams didn't exist
      - nerdawson 2y ago
        That's true, in certain situations, companies can use the system to make it painfully risky to attempt to take action against them. There's a very different business culture in the UK when it comes to legal threats and I suspect the fact the loser pays both sides plays a big part in that. As a business owner, I'm happy to avoid more commonplace legal nonsense, even if it means there's potential for huge companies to abuse it.
      - jalapenos 2y ago
        It's not any and all costs. The court makes the loser pay costs that are proportional and reasonable given the issues in the case. Which makes sense as otherwise Google could indeed tell its lawyers to go on a billing spree to hurt the counterparty if they lose. (Not a lawyer)
    - nullc 2y ago
      From reports wright was already spending a multiple of what his opponents were spending, the risk of having to pay our legal costs was probably not a major factor in his thinking. He essentially bragged on his slack that the relative costs didn't matter as his goal was ruining his opponents by causing them costs. A relevant detail is that even though loser pays in the UK they don't pay 100%, so one can potentially make the residual they do pay ruinous.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  If this was in the UK, I suspect he'll be paying winner's legal fees. The US doesn't do that, but I'm pretty sure that it's fairly common, in the UK. Good way to reduce frivolous lawsuits.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    This was in the UK. He's paying at least those; I suspect this ruling will make a criminal prosectutor's ears perk up. The US permits attorneys fees in some cases, including "against a plaintiff who has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly or for oppressive reasons".
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      This whole thing reminds me of that guy that claims he invented email, and is suing everyone (The Nanny’s husband, if I remember).
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > If this was in the UK, I suspect he'll be paying winner's legal fees. > The US doesn't do that, but I'm pretty sure that it's fairly common, in the UK. > Good way to reduce frivolous lawsuits. Depends on what sort of lawsuits you care about facilitating. A lot of lawsuits in the US are done on contingency. What happens if the defendant wins in that case? If the person bringing the case can't pay their own lawyers, they probably can't pay for the defense's legal bills either. Is the law firm on the hook? That'll put a damper on the cases that firms will take on on a contingency basis.
    - nullc 2y ago
      In the UK the parties that finance litigation are supposed to be the hook in that case.
initplus 2y ago
'Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person,' the judge stated. 'However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the court extensively and repeatedly.' Pretty damning statement.
- once_inc 2y ago
  Rightfully so. Wright has a grating personality, with an obnoxious air of superiority. He claims to have coded up bitcoin v0.1 while simultaneously being unable to explain to a judge what an unsigned integer is. The trial was a complete win for COPA, who can use the litigation to prevent/win the multiple other cases Wright has started with developers and bitcoiners over the years, like McCormack, Hodlonaut, and others.
  - dmix 2y ago
    > being unable to explain to a judge what an unsigned integer is. Plus the bulk of the article focused on his forgery of documents allegedly predating Bitcoin paper release, detected because he used an new version of Latex and his failed attempts to mimic the document metadata to be like Satoshis metadata.
    - nullc 2y ago
      The Bitcoin whitepaper was created with OpenOffice. Wright tried to create forgeries with both Word and OpenOffice, but he was unable to reproduce the illustrations as vector art and the bitmaps were noticed. He also got burned over and over again by hidden data in Word (and OO) documents revealing things like the fact that the document was started off as a copy and paste of Satoshi's and then edited to look like a precursor. Wright appears to have decided to try to solve both problems by declaring that the whitepaper was really created with LaTeX-- since tex files don't have hidden metadata and he could use an online conversion tool to convert the vector illustrations. Too bad he seems to have been unable to get LaTeX running locally, so he used overleaf--an online LaTeX editor-- which recorded his every revision creating his forgeries. He tried to claim overleaf did not store any such data, too bad it's substantially open source and his opponents included actual software developers. https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_wBWP.mp4 https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_wBWP.mp4 (red overlay being the real bitcoin whitepaper) https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_woBWP.mp4 https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_woBWP.mp4 You can see him incrementally twiddling the spacing trying to get the line wraps in the same positions from the beginning of the document down to the end. Our barrister's cross examination after running this video was quite stunning. :)
rwmj 2y ago
The actual judgement is interesting/funny: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/COPA-v-Wright-Judgment.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/COPA-v-W...
blowski 2y ago
It makes a fascinating conspiracy theory to pretend he's right about all the "bad actors" tampering with his files. All nonsense of course, but makes a good yarn.
- nullc 2y ago
  At the end of the trial his excuses along those lines became so convoluted he claimed on the stand that his enemies must have had audio bugs in his home so that they could send a backdated email (to attempt to plant it in the email history of his former lawyers) shortly before a copy of the same message privately to his wife.
throwaway22032 2y ago
It's honestly bizarre that this has gone on so long. In the community we knew this from day 1. It was like your mate down the pub pretending to be Einstein. The pub believed him...
- nullc 2y ago
  I think the media played a big part of it along with his litigation threats silencing the parts of it that knew better. Most of the coverage that did come out kept treating him and his claims as credible, astonishing as it was.
rdtsc 2y ago
> judgment highlights Wright's failure to prove his assertion that he owns 'genesis blocks' of bitcoin which would today be worth billions of pounds. Under cross-examination, Wright attempted to explain gaps in his evidence by resorting to 'technobabble'. Wonder what he babbled about? That would seem like one of the more convincing proofs. “Here, let me move one of those original bitcoins”. So it had to be some version of “the dog ate the hard drive” kind of excuse.
- once_inc 2y ago
  The X account BitNorbert has livetweeted most what was said during the court proceedings. Wright babbled about how external systems that hosted his files had changed the metadata in an attempt to extricate him from the mess he left himself in when forensic experts noted how his evidence contained timestamps from 2024 or 2023. Wright extensively modified files, including iteratively modifying a latex file containing the whitepaper to make it layout similarly to the original whitepaper (which was written in openoffice btw). Wright is a narcissistic fraud that continued doubling down upon doubling down on his own lies.
- throwaway22032 2y ago
  The entire thing from the beginning has been him playing this silly game like a five year old that thinks we can't see him under the bed.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Usually when people do this, they don't care that anyone with a half a brain knows they are lying, because they focus their attention ripping off people who don't have half a brain. I'm going to decline to wave my arms at all the Current Things, but you can fill in blanks easily .
    - nullc 2y ago
      > Usually when people do this, they don't care that anyone with a half a brain knows they are lying, because they focus their attention ripping off people who don't have half a brain. Indeed. The scammer doesn't care if most people disbelieve, they only need a few (their victims) to believe very strongly. The goals of being generally believable and very convincing to a few can even be mutually exclusive. Especially when things like defamation litigation threats silences people who know he's lying, or at least keep them easily dismissed (e.g. posting anonymously).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
surfingdino 2y ago
I was approached twice to work for his blockchain business. Recruiters sounded surprised and offended when I told them I would not work for someone who is suing other devs.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629
jalapenos 2y ago
The guy sounds like an absolute whackjob level narcissist.

108 points by geox 2y ago

This was discussed yesterday a bit also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629 I don’t fully understand the last sentence in this article, is this guy going to be punished for being a fraud or is that not how it works?

ceejayoz 2y ago
I'd expect some of that injunctive relief to include his paying the other side's substantial legal fees.
- nerdawson 2y ago
  He's had his assets frozen to ensure he can't get out of paying the legal fees: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/bitcoin-high-court-london-b1151135.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/bitcoin-high-court-lon... The norm, as far as I'm aware, is that the losing side is on the hook for the winner's legal fees. Seems like a pretty good deterrent against bringing frivolous claims.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Some pros, some cons. It can exacerbate power imbalances; Google can afford to be on the hook for a $20M legal team, but you probably can't.
    - chaorace 2y ago
      The policy probably made more sense back when $20M legal teams didn't exist
    - nerdawson 2y ago
      That's true, in certain situations, companies can use the system to make it painfully risky to attempt to take action against them. There's a very different business culture in the UK when it comes to legal threats and I suspect the fact the loser pays both sides plays a big part in that. As a business owner, I'm happy to avoid more commonplace legal nonsense, even if it means there's potential for huge companies to abuse it.
    - jalapenos 2y ago
      It's not any and all costs. The court makes the loser pay costs that are proportional and reasonable given the issues in the case. Which makes sense as otherwise Google could indeed tell its lawyers to go on a billing spree to hurt the counterparty if they lose. (Not a lawyer)
  - nullc 2y ago
    From reports wright was already spending a multiple of what his opponents were spending, the risk of having to pay our legal costs was probably not a major factor in his thinking. He essentially bragged on his slack that the relative costs didn't matter as his goal was ruining his opponents by causing them costs. A relevant detail is that even though loser pays in the UK they don't pay 100%, so one can potentially make the residual they do pay ruinous.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
If this was in the UK, I suspect he'll be paying winner's legal fees. The US doesn't do that, but I'm pretty sure that it's fairly common, in the UK. Good way to reduce frivolous lawsuits.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  This was in the UK. He's paying at least those; I suspect this ruling will make a criminal prosectutor's ears perk up. The US permits attorneys fees in some cases, including "against a plaintiff who has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly or for oppressive reasons".
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    This whole thing reminds me of that guy that claims he invented email, and is suing everyone (The Nanny’s husband, if I remember).
- nordsieck 2y ago
  > If this was in the UK, I suspect he'll be paying winner's legal fees. > The US doesn't do that, but I'm pretty sure that it's fairly common, in the UK. > Good way to reduce frivolous lawsuits. Depends on what sort of lawsuits you care about facilitating. A lot of lawsuits in the US are done on contingency. What happens if the defendant wins in that case? If the person bringing the case can't pay their own lawyers, they probably can't pay for the defense's legal bills either. Is the law firm on the hook? That'll put a damper on the cases that firms will take on on a contingency basis.
  - nullc 2y ago
    In the UK the parties that finance litigation are supposed to be the hook in that case.

initplus 2y ago

'Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person,' the judge stated. 'However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the court extensively and repeatedly.' Pretty damning statement.

once_inc 2y ago
Rightfully so. Wright has a grating personality, with an obnoxious air of superiority. He claims to have coded up bitcoin v0.1 while simultaneously being unable to explain to a judge what an unsigned integer is. The trial was a complete win for COPA, who can use the litigation to prevent/win the multiple other cases Wright has started with developers and bitcoiners over the years, like McCormack, Hodlonaut, and others.
- dmix 2y ago
  > being unable to explain to a judge what an unsigned integer is. Plus the bulk of the article focused on his forgery of documents allegedly predating Bitcoin paper release, detected because he used an new version of Latex and his failed attempts to mimic the document metadata to be like Satoshis metadata.
  - nullc 2y ago
    The Bitcoin whitepaper was created with OpenOffice. Wright tried to create forgeries with both Word and OpenOffice, but he was unable to reproduce the illustrations as vector art and the bitmaps were noticed. He also got burned over and over again by hidden data in Word (and OO) documents revealing things like the fact that the document was started off as a copy and paste of Satoshi's and then edited to look like a precursor. Wright appears to have decided to try to solve both problems by declaring that the whitepaper was really created with LaTeX-- since tex files don't have hidden metadata and he could use an online conversion tool to convert the vector illustrations. Too bad he seems to have been unable to get LaTeX running locally, so he used overleaf--an online LaTeX editor-- which recorded his every revision creating his forgeries. He tried to claim overleaf did not store any such data, too bad it's substantially open source and his opponents included actual software developers. https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_wBWP.mp4 https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_wBWP.mp4 (red overlay being the real bitcoin whitepaper) https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_woBWP.mp4 https://nt4tn.net/Wrightpaper_editing_woBWP.mp4 You can see him incrementally twiddling the spacing trying to get the line wraps in the same positions from the beginning of the document down to the end. Our barrister's cross examination after running this video was quite stunning. :)

rwmj 2y ago

The actual judgement is interesting/funny: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/COPA-v-Wright-Judgment.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/COPA-v-W...

blowski 2y ago

It makes a fascinating conspiracy theory to pretend he's right about all the "bad actors" tampering with his files. All nonsense of course, but makes a good yarn.

nullc 2y ago
At the end of the trial his excuses along those lines became so convoluted he claimed on the stand that his enemies must have had audio bugs in his home so that they could send a backdated email (to attempt to plant it in the email history of his former lawyers) shortly before a copy of the same message privately to his wife.

throwaway22032 2y ago

It's honestly bizarre that this has gone on so long. In the community we knew this from day 1. It was like your mate down the pub pretending to be Einstein. The pub believed him...

nullc 2y ago
I think the media played a big part of it along with his litigation threats silencing the parts of it that knew better. Most of the coverage that did come out kept treating him and his claims as credible, astonishing as it was.

rdtsc 2y ago

> judgment highlights Wright's failure to prove his assertion that he owns 'genesis blocks' of bitcoin which would today be worth billions of pounds. Under cross-examination, Wright attempted to explain gaps in his evidence by resorting to 'technobabble'. Wonder what he babbled about? That would seem like one of the more convincing proofs. “Here, let me move one of those original bitcoins”. So it had to be some version of “the dog ate the hard drive” kind of excuse.

once_inc 2y ago
The X account BitNorbert has livetweeted most what was said during the court proceedings. Wright babbled about how external systems that hosted his files had changed the metadata in an attempt to extricate him from the mess he left himself in when forensic experts noted how his evidence contained timestamps from 2024 or 2023. Wright extensively modified files, including iteratively modifying a latex file containing the whitepaper to make it layout similarly to the original whitepaper (which was written in openoffice btw). Wright is a narcissistic fraud that continued doubling down upon doubling down on his own lies.
throwaway22032 2y ago
The entire thing from the beginning has been him playing this silly game like a five year old that thinks we can't see him under the bed.
- lupire 2y ago
  Usually when people do this, they don't care that anyone with a half a brain knows they are lying, because they focus their attention ripping off people who don't have half a brain. I'm going to decline to wave my arms at all the Current Things, but you can fill in blanks easily .
  - nullc 2y ago
    > Usually when people do this, they don't care that anyone with a half a brain knows they are lying, because they focus their attention ripping off people who don't have half a brain. Indeed. The scammer doesn't care if most people disbelieve, they only need a few (their victims) to believe very strongly. The goals of being generally believable and very convincing to a few can even be mutually exclusive. Especially when things like defamation litigation threats silences people who know he's lying, or at least keep them easily dismissed (e.g. posting anonymously).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

surfingdino 2y ago

I was approached twice to work for his blockchain business. Recruiters sounded surprised and offended when I told them I would not work for someone who is suing other devs.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40416629

jalapenos 2y ago

The guy sounds like an absolute whackjob level narcissist.