A man who has claimed to be the creator of bitcoin is being sued over an alleged scheme to steal $5 billion worth of cryptocurrency and other assets from a former business partner.

Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright in 2016 said he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor behind the world's largest cryptocurrency.

But a lawsuit, filed earlier this month with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Wright plotted to swindle IT security expert Dave Kleiman out of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins and intellectual property rights to a number of blockchain technologies. Blockchain is the decentralized ledger that underpins bitcoin.

Kleiman was left wheelchair-bound after a motorcycle accident. He died in April 2013 after suffering from an MRSA infection. The lawsuit was filed by his brother Ira on behalf of Kleiman's estate.

According to the filing, Wright and Kleiman partnered to mine bitcoin, and owned and controlled more than 1.1 million bitcoins between them.