Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who is known as “Faketoshi” in the crypto community, was found to be a fake Satoshi Nakamoto by a British court in March, and suffered another major blow this month. The High Court of England issued a global freezing order against Craig Wright on May 5th, requiring him to compensate crypto influencer Peter McCormack with 1.548 million pounds for legal costs.
According to court documents released on May 5th, the High Court of England issued a global freezing order against Craig Wright, requiring him to compensate Peter McCormack with 1.548 million pounds to cover the legal costs incurred by Peter McCormack in 2019 after being sued for defamation. This defamation lawsuit stemmed from Peter McCormack’s accusation on social media and YouTube that Craig Wright was a fake Satoshi Nakamoto, which led to Craig Wright filing a defamation lawsuit. In a previous ruling, one court acknowledged that Peter McCormack’s remarks had damaged Craig Wright’s reputation, but due to Craig Wright’s dishonest behavior, including providing false evidence, he was only awarded a nominal sum of 1 pound for reputational damage.
High Court Judge James Mellor stated that the defamation lawsuit was clearly part of a series of false actions organized by Craig Wright and his supporters to establish that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, with the ultimate goal of gaining access to a large amount of Bitcoin allegedly belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto. Consequently, James Mellor ordered Craig Wright to pay 1.548 million pounds to Peter McCormack to cover his legal costs, stating that the defamation lawsuit was based on lies and supported by a series of forged documents.
The ruling also includes orders to disclose assets and enforce asset orders in jurisdictions such as Australia, the Seychelles, Antigua and Barbuda, and Singapore.
Craig Wright, who has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto since 2016 but has failed to provide substantial evidence, has suffered repeated defeats and has been nicknamed “Faketoshi” by the community. The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) filed a lawsuit against Craig Wright in February of this year to prevent him from taking legal action against developers and members of the crypto community or obtaining intellectual property rights to Bitcoin’s open-source technology.
The court later ruled in March that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto and is not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, thus ending the intellectual property dispute that could have had a significant impact on the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. This ruling proved that Craig Wright is a fake Satoshi Nakamoto, laying the legal foundation for Peter McCormack to receive legal compensation.
Earlier in March of this year, a British court had ordered the global freezing of Craig Wright’s 6 million pounds in assets to prevent him from transferring assets abroad to avoid paying legal fees related to lawsuits.