The case of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery.
In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” Mellor said at the time, “that Dr Wright is not the author of the bitcoin white paper.” In the written judgment that followed, Mellor said that Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” in written and oral evidence. “Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim … Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this court’s process.”
Wright’s written evidence was called out as a potential forgery before the trial even opened, and his own expert witnesses appeared to concur. In cross-examination, Wright dismissed the allegations, and claimed his expert witness was not suitably qualified. “If I had forged that document then it would be perfect,” he said at one point.
In a ruling on Tuesday, Mellor said he would refer “relevant” papers in the legal action to the CPS to consider whether criminal charges should be brought against Wright.
“In advancing his false claim to be Satoshi through multiple legal actions, Dr Wright committed ‘a most serious abuse’ of the process of the courts of the UK, Norway and the USA,” the ruling said.
“In these circumstances … I have no doubt that I should refer the relevant papers in this case to the CPS for consideration of whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents and/or whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued and/or whether his extradition should be sought from wherever he now is.
“All those matters are to be decided by the CPS.”
An earlier court case, brought by Wright against a bitcoin celebrity who had accused him of being “a liar” and “a fraud”, had ended in a shock victory for the Australian, after the respondent, Peter McCormack, dropped his defence on the grounds of truth. But Wright’s victory was a pyrrhic one: the judge, Mr Justic Chamberlain, ruled that he had “advanced a deliberately false case”, and awarded token damages of just £1.