Judge James Mellor has released the written judgment on the COPA vs Wright case: falsification of evidence aimed at deceiving the court.
On May 20th, the written judgment issued by the High Court of Justice in England on the COPA vs Wright case was published. In a 231-page document, Judge Mellor extensively analyzed the evidence leading him to conclude that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.
The key points of the judgment
The judgment indicates that Wright provided falsified evidence to support his claim. The manipulation of various documents was part of a scheme to deceive the English court, the Norwegian court in the Hodlonaut case, and the US court in the Kleimann case.
According to the judge, Wright is an individual who repeatedly lied to the court and orchestrated a media campaign to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Mellor considers the evidence against Wright to be overwhelming, and his claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto were supported by falsified documents and continual lies.
The judgment also examines some of the manipulated evidence provided by Wright.
Private signing sessions
During the trial, Wright claimed to have demonstrated ownership of the private keys of the early blocks, including blocks 1 and 9, during private signing sessions with journalists and key figures in the Bitcoin community, such as Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis. However, such sessions were never publicly verified, and the evidence provided proved unreliable in establishing Wright’s ownership of the private keys.
Forgery of LaTeX documents
In court, Wright produced LaTeX files that he claimed represented original versions of the Bitcoin white paper. However, metadata analysis showed that these files were created last September. Wright would have recreated the white paper in LaTeX, making changes.
The conclusions of the judgment
The judge’s final decision was based on the apparent lack of credible evidence from Wright and the dishonesty of his claims.
The judgment concludes that Wright is not the author of the white paper, is not Satoshi Nakamoto, is not the creator of Bitcoin, and did not write the Bitcoin software.
In the judgment, Judge Mellor states:
“Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. 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. Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim. All his lies and forged documents were in support of his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.”
“Dr Wright has lied so much over so many years that, on certain points, it can be difficult to pinpoint what actually happened. Those difficulties do not detract from the fact that there is a very considerable body of evidence against Dr Wright being Satoshi.”
