Craig Wright - His Bitcoin Fraud Career



Remember?







This time, we're going to explore the brain that spawned #Faketoshi up close & personal, up till the self-dox & ATO raid in December 2015.



Beware, this is going to be epic.



1/57

2008



Craig Wright did NOT write the Bitcoin whitepaper. Nor did he do any coding on Bitcoin whatsoever.



Instead, he was "Overwriting Hard Drive Data" and "Hacking Coffee Makers" in 2008.



2/57

2009



Craig Wright did NOT start the Bitcoin network. Nor did he use the Bitcoin-Qt client*, nor did he perform any Bitcoin mining whatsoever.



*





Instead, in early 2009 Craig...



3/57

January 29, 2009



... Wright sets up Information Defense Pty Ltd (AU). No references to Dave Kleiman and/or Bitcoin can be found at this time. Instead, "Information Defense is the Australian leader in data protection."



4/57

2010



Craig Wright did NOT abandon the Bitcoin project, out of "concern that the token was increasingly being used to trade drugs and child pornography".



Instead, Craig had no idea that Bitcoin even existed in 2010.



5/57

February 14, 2011



W&K Info Defense Research LLC (USA) "a Joint Venture Company between a US Vet. Owned Enterprise and a Australian Research Company" gets incorporated by Dave Kleiman. The company name appears to be inspired by Craig Wright's Australian company.



6/57

March, 2011



With their W&K (Wright & Kleiman) vehicle, Craig and Dave tried to get funding from Homeland Security for no less than 4 projects. All 4 projects were not even remotely Bitcoin related...



7/57

May 31, 2011



... and trying to get funding for these non-Bitcoin related totally failed also, as Ira Kleiman's counsel found out in March 2018 during the Kleiman v. Wright lawsuit.



8/57

(on a sidenote, Craig has been publicly lying about his and Dave Kleiman's involvement with Homeland Security, but hey... what's new... Craig is hardly truthful about anything Bitcoin related)



9/57

In the following couple of tweets, I present several articles to get a feel for what happened in Bitcoin 2011, while Craig was digesting the Homeland Security failure.



10/57

June 19, 2011



"Inside the Mega-Hack of Bitcoin: the Full Story"



"Mt. Gox loses database; exchanges close after 500,000 coins are missing or stolen"



Source:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110802023211/http://www.dailytech.com/Inside+the+MegaHack+of+Bitcoin+the+Full+Story/article21942.htm …



11/57

June 22, 2011



"More than $9m of online currency was stolen in weekend attack on Bitcoin currency exchange [Mt Gox] that could cost members of Anonymous and LulzSec thousands of dollars each"



Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/22/lulzsec-rogue-suspected-of-bitcoin-hack …



12/57

June 24, 2011



https://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/06/24/lulzsec-claims-to-have-received-over-18000-worth-of-donations/ …



"Whirlpool revealed little new, however one interesting nugget did come to light. Lulzsec has been using the much discussed Bitcoin currency to receive donations."



13/57

July 28, 2011



So, who started to join the conversation about hacking group Lulzsec, Anonymous and Bitcoin one month later?



https://theconversation.com/are-anonymous-and-lulzsec-about-to-hack-paypal-for-wikileaks-2582#comment_6261 …



Here is where Craig spoke about "BitCoin" (note the misspelling) in public for the very first time in his whole life.



14/57

July 28, 2011 (cont)



And a brilliant consideration from @DustinDry1st about this moment Craig Wright found out about Bitcoin, compared to the real Satoshi Nakamoto's wording of his project:







15/57

August 8, 2011



https://theconversation.com/lulzsec-anonymous-freedom-fighters-or-the-new-face-of-evil-2605#comment_6111 …



https://theconversation.com/lulzsec-anonymous-freedom-fighters-or-the-new-face-of-evil-2605#comment_6162 …



Craig mentions Bitcoin in another 2 comments to another article he wrote about Lulzsec. Again, note the misspellings that Satoshi Nakamoto never made.



16/57

April 24, 2012



FBI releases a well researched report about Bitcoin. None of the information or sources used can be linked to Craig Wright, however. And that is remarkable.



More info here:







17/57

Why is this remarkable?



Because in 2003, Craig was appointed as Asia Pacific Director of GICSR. And he was presumably in touch with the FBI since then. Why wasn't our #Faketoshi the Bitcoin inventor himself interviewed by the FBI? 🤷‍♂️



Source:

https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/science/cyber-security-research-initiative/_nocache …



18/57

Talking about careers, Forbes did a great article on Craig Wright's whole controversial career up till the moment he doxed himself in November 2015 (which was published by Wired & Gizmodo magazines on December 9, 2015).



https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/09/craig-wright-bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto-convicted-government-security-pro/#9ef0ec8642e5 …



19/57

April 17, 2013



Craig Wright registers Coin-Exch Pty Ltd, which later became one of the 2 handfuls of companies used in the ATO tax frauds of 2014/2015.



It is extremely unlikely that Dave Kleiman was involved with Coin-Exch.



20/57

April 22, 2013



Craig Wright starts trading Bitcoin on Mt Gox with a deposit of AUD 5,000. This is the very first time that he actually touched "physical" Bitcoin. Its price hovered between ~$75 and ~$266 in that month.







21/57

April 26, 2013



Dave Kleiman passed away.



"His body was decomposing, there were wheelchair tracks of blood and fecal matter, open bottles of alcohol, and a loaded handgun next to him."[...] The official cause of death is listed as natural."



https://gizmodo.com/the-strange-life-and-death-of-dave-kleiman-a-computer-1747092460 …



22/57

June 24, 2013



ATO released a press briefing about Bitcoin transactions & investments from 2009 till present.



https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-ato-will-be-taxing-bitcoin-income-2013-6 …



https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-ato-says-bitcoins-have-been-taxable-since-the-get-go-2013-6 …



This knowledge is crucial for the direction Craig takes his upcoming Bitcoin frauds after Dave's death.



23/57

July 25, 2013



Craig Wright starts setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Screenshot shamelessly taken from Satoshi Itches website.



We will learn in 2014 that Craig, for tax avoidance reasons, will hide his (non-existing) Bitcoins offshore.



24/57

August 13, 2013



Craig continues setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Another screenshot from Satoshi Itches website.



25/57

August 16, 2013



Craig continues setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Another screenshot from Satoshi Itches website.



26/57

August 19, 2013



Craig continues setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Another screenshot from Satoshi Itches website.



27/57

August 28, 2013



Craig continues setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Another screenshot from Satoshi Itches website.



28/57

September 15, 2013



First known Hotwire announcement on Craig's blog.



Screenshot from Wayback Machine June 2014. No mention of Bitcoin. However, "In the next nine months, secrets will start to come out."



Craig was obviously thinking about his #Faketoshi act already here.



29/57

October, 2013



Around this time, Uyen Nguyen - a sockpuppet in several of Craig's forged and backdated contracts - had also opened an account on Mt Gox with Bitcoin address 1JYMP2cd25D8ALAgVe5n3Zktfzfpi2nxCy.



https://blog.wizsec.jp/2018/02/kleiman-v-craig-wright-bitcoins.html#more …



30/57

October, 2013 (cont)



Uyen received 2 payments from Craig (from his external wallet) here, for a total of 14.95 BTC. It is my guess that this was a payment for being complicit in the Bitcoin fraud that Craig was setting up, and to keep silent about things.



31/57

November 2013



Craig Wright gets married with Ramona Watts. The Kleiman v. Wright lawsuit recently provided some interesting information about their (early) relationship. Craig totally involves his wife Ramona in his #Faketoshi act.



32/57

November 4, 2013



Craig continues setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Another screenshot from Satoshi Itches website.



33/57

November 6, 2013



Craig finalizes setting up his early mining/Bitcoin IP fraud around dead Dave Kleiman. Another screenshot from Satoshi Itches website.



34/57

November 25, 2013



Craig Wright sells 23.46 BTC at ~$775 on Mt Gox, receives some $18,000 for that trade, and in a typical amateurish FOMO move, uses the $18,000 to buy back 17.24 BTC a few days later when the price hit almost $1,100.







35/57

December, 2013



What happened meanwhile with Coin-Exch Pty Ltd is described here.







Craig had set up several Bitcoin related endeavors (on paper only of course) and now tried to obtain millions of Australian tax payers' money for his fraud scheme.



36/57

February 12, 2014



Craig Wright contacted Louis Kleiman, the father of late Dave Kleiman (and Ira Kleiman). Here we see an early example of Craig falsely hinting to be Satoshi Nakamoto.



"Your son Dave and I are two of the three key people behind Bitcoin"



37/57

February 14, 2014



Hotwire "launched" to not much global fanfare, despite the obviously ambitious plans. Only Business Insider Australia devoted a little article on it.



https://www.businessinsider.com.au/aussie-technologists-are-opening-the-worlds-first-bitcoin-based-bank-this-year-2014-2 …



"[Craig Wright] expected a stock market listing to be in the pipeline"



38/57

February 18, 2014



The first of 2 ATO hearings, discussing Craig's many businesses, the status and role of Bitcoin and... Craig again falsely hints to his early role in Bitcoin. Only mining though! 2 screenshots from the hearing transcript.



39/57

February 26, 2014



From the 2nd ATO hearing transcript we learn a lot more about Craig's tax fraud set up in detail. And other hilarious things like:



"Craig had gotten approximately 1.1 million Bitcoins. [...] Mr Kleiman would have had a similar amount." 😂😂😂



40/57

And for who's interested in what the ATO thought of all this in the end...







41/57

February 28, 2014



Back to the timeline. On this day, Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo, Japan.



42/57

March 9, 2014



Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States. For who's interested, CoinTelegraph did a great article in 2018 about the history of Mt Gox.



https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-mess-that-was-mt-gox-four-years-on …



43/57

April 29, 2014



Only 2.5 months after launch, instead of a stock listing, Hotwire is already in trouble. Note how Craig lied about not being able to provide "financial accommodation" as he had lost access to "significant exposure" on Mt Gox.







44/57

During 2013/2014, Craig Wright build a long list of lies, false court & ATO hearing statements, forgeries, fake contracts, backdated job assignments etc. Shown here are another few examples, (back)dated to 2008, 2011, 2012 and 2013.



45/57

Other examples of Craig Wright preparing & executing his tax fraud can be found here:



The Integyrs Fraud





And here:



The Coin-Exch Fraud





46/57

Halfway October, 2014



Craig Wright sets up the Tulip Trust fraud. Explained in every painful detail in this tweetstorm:







47/57

A lot of the 2014 forgeries were performed with an email program called Bitmessage, where Craig would send emails to himself on computer devices with backdated clock times, followed up with adjusting the metadata of the emails & their attachments.







48/57

May 18, 2015



Craig Wright's second fraudulent business attempt in the Bitcoin arena, DeMorgan Ltd ("eligible to receive approximately $54,000,000 in R&D cash rebate for the R&D activities") launched.



Quote from:

https://www.grantcentral.com.au/big-numbers-involved-in-rd-tax-incentive/ …



49/57

Halfway 2015



Bitcoin Belle is helpful in the process of Craig infiltrating in the Bitcoin community.



"She made introductions for Craig to Jon Matonis and Roger Ver. [...] Roger was easily duped at this point."



Must read:

https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-belles-ccme-the-woman-who-brought-you-craig-satoshi-wright-strikes-again-f74e4ef129a4 …



50/57

Lisa Edwards, Craig Wright's sister, hints to Craig having had an affair with Bitcoin Belle (real name Michelle Seven) in a now-deleted tweet. If true, and presuming Ramona Watts was unaware of this affair, Craig might have committed infidelity here?



51/57

October 23, 2015



This article nails the moment where Craig added false Bitcoin-related information on his blog between Sep 22 & Nov 22, 2015, just before the ATO raid & self-dox in Dec 2015.







Original article

https://web.archive.org/web/20151122141913/http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com/ …



52/57

Those late 2015 forgeries (adding several Bitcoin references in 2008/2009 articles, changing the header that appears above EVERY article) on his blog lead to several hilarious situations when reading back older articles:







53/57

December 9, 2015 - The Dox



Wired & Gizmodo both broke the same story at the same time. Why that was is explained by Hackernoon (see screenshot).



Wired (who updated their article in 2019!):

https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ …



Gizmodo:

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/12/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bitcoin/ …



54/57

December 9, 2015 - The Raid



And within hours after the publications of the (extremely likely self-)dox of Craig Wright as #Faketoshi, news about a raid on Craig Wright's home and office made headlines.



https://www.businessinsider.com/police-raid-craig-wright-2015-12?international=true&r=US&IR=T …



55/57

Craig Wright - End Notes



This thread only shows some highlights of Craig's mostly fraudulent journey in the Bitcoin arena since July 2011, when he learned about Bitcoin, till 2015.



For who's interested, way more info can be found on my page:



https://seekingsatoshi.weebly.com/mylegacykit.html …



56/57

April 11, 2016



BONUS tweet.



“People like you are dangerous and need to be exposed before someone in a position of power actually believes that you know what you are talking about.” - Timothy M. Mullen on Craig Wright, 2010



Amen.



Must read:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/craig-wright-is-not-satoshi-nakamoto-the-myth-lives-on …



57/57

You can follow @MyLegacyKit.

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