An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to have invented Bitcoin has been referred to UK prosecutors for alleged perjury.
A judge at London’s High Court found Dr Craig Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” to support his claim that he was “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the pseudonym attributed to the person widely credited with creating the cryptocurrency.
Dr Wright was sued by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), a non-profit group that includes cryptocurrency firms, to stop him suing Bitcoin developers.
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Judge James Mellor ruled in March that the evidence Dr Wright was not Satoshi was “overwhelming”, after a five-week civil trial during which the group claimed he committed “forgery on an industrial scale” to support a “brazen lie”.
In a written ruling today, the judge said he was referring the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider prosecution over potential perjury and forgery.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Dr Wright first claimed to be Satoshi in 2016.
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He said he was the author of a 2008 white paper, the foundational text of Bitcoin, which was published under the pseudonym.
He denied the allegations during the trial, where at stake were not just bragging rights to the creation of the world’s most popular virtual currency, but claims over intellectual property.