Craig Wright Sued by Dave Kleiman's Estate Over Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoins

Craig Wright, the Australian entrepreneur who claimed two years ago to be Satoshi ‎Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin , is being sued for more $5 billion worth of Bitcoin by the ‎estate of the late IT security‎ expert Dave Kleiman.‎

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Dave Kleiman died in 2013 after having been ‎confined to a wheelchair for years ‎following a motorcyle accident in 1995‎. His estate filed a ‎class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District ‎of Florida on February 14.

The allegations concern the ownership of between 550,000 and 1.1 million bitcoins, as well as the ‎intellectual property rights of various Blockchain technologies. “As of the date of filing, the ‎value of these assets far exceed $5,118,266,427.50 USD,” the estate's lawyers wrote in a statement.

Dave Kleiman was an IT expert in Pam Beach, Florida, who had much expertise in computer ‎forensics and ‎security. ‎The relationship with Craig Wright, which remained mostly hidden, ‎was born out of a mutual obsession with cryptography and data security, the ‎court papers say. ‎

In 2015, leaked emails from Wright to Kleiman showed ‎they had been discussing a new form of electronic money, months before the launch Nakomoto’s whitepaper about Bitcoin in January 2009.‎

The lawsuit claims that Wright schemed to steal Dave’s bitcoins and the intellectual property rights associated with cryptocurrency ‎technology. In addition, he forged and backdated a series of contracts that ‎purported to transfer Dave’s assets to his companies.

Shortly after his death, according to the filling, Wright made contact with Dave’s ‎brother to inform him that they had been working on a project together and that ‎Kleiman had mined enormous amounts of bitcoins, and requested to check his ‎old computers for wallet files.

This might have given Wright access to information ‎that only Satoshi could have known, which in turn have been used when Craig ‎once tried to offer proof that he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto.‎

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In 2015, leaked emails from Wright to Kleiman showed ‎they had been discussing a new form of electronic money, months before the launch Nakomoto’s whitepaper about Bitcoin in January 2009.‎

This might have given Wright access to information ‎that only Satoshi could have known, which in turn have been used when Craig ‎once tried to offer proof that he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto.‎