COPA takes Craig Wright to Court for Impersonating Satoshi Nakamoto with Forged Emails

38. Spoofed email from Dr Wright in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto (1) {ID_001546} / {L8/338/1}

742. This document presents as an email sent in January 2014 from Satoshi Nakamoto to Dr Wright’s collaborator (Uyen Nguyen), as if the writer was in fact Dr Wright making use of the email address Satoshi@vistomail.com.

(a) COPA’s Reasons for Alleging Forgery

743. The document is an inauthentic, spoofed email. [PM21 [32-34, 93]].

744. The email was not sent from the account recorded as the sender. [PM21 [94]].

745. The email was not sent from a permitted source and did not authenticate with the purported Vistomail origin server. [PM21 [20-34]].

746. Email replies to this message would have been directed to Dr Wright at his email address craig.wright@hotwirepe.com. [PM21 [9-13]].

747. The document originates from a computer with the name “cwright” and from an IP address of Dr Wright, being the same IP address as is associated with several other documents identified as originating from Dr Wright. [PM21 [14-18]].

748. The document was recorded in its transmission header as being “for craig@rcjbr.org” and “Delivered to craig@rcjbr.org”. It was not retrieved from the mailbox of Satoshi Nakamoto, but a received item from within Dr Wright’s personal email inbox consistent with him being included as a blind copy (BCC) recipient. [PM21 [18-19]].

749. No equivalent sent item has been disclosed by Dr Wright. [PM21 [35]].

750. This email is not authentically from the controller of the email account “satoshi@vistomail.com”. [PM21 [34]].

(b) COPA’s Reasons for Inferring Dr Wright’s Knowledge / Responsibility

751. The effect of the tampering is to make the document appear to be supportive of Dr Wright’s claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto (i.e. as suggesting that he was using a Satoshi vistomail account in 2014), contrary to fact.

752. The document is an email sent in Dr Wright’s style of language using Dr Wright’s personal and hotwirepe email addresses.

753. The document is an email sent to a collaborator of Dr Wright.

754. The text of the document discourages its recipient from showing the content of the email to others.

755. The document was recorded in its transmission header as being “for craig@rcjbr.org” and “Delivered to craig@rcjbr.org”. It was not retrieved from the mailbox of Satoshi Nakamoto, but a received item from within Dr Wright’s personal email inbox consistent with him being included as a blind copy (BCC) recipient. [PM21 [18-19]].

756. No equivalent sent item has been disclosed by Dr Wright. [PM21 [35]].

(c) Dr Wright’s Explanations and COPA’s Rebuttal

57. Dr Wright does not dispute that this is a spoofed email, but denies that he created it. In Appendix B to Wright11, he claimed that it had not come from him or his mailbox; that somebody had sent it to the ATO; that the ATO had disclosed it to Ira Kleiman; and that Mr Kleiman had then disclosed it back to Dr Wright in the Kleiman litigation. Dr Wright said that it was likely that Ms Nguyen created this email, thinking that it would help him. See: {CSW/2/61}.

758. In his oral evidence, he said that this document was among those collected from the computer of a former employee of one of his companies who had access to emails to which they ought not have had access. He no longer said that it was likely that Ms Nguyen had created the email, saying only that it was a possibility. See: {Day4/64:3} to {Day4/68:2}.

759. COPA submitted that Dr Wright’s explanation should be rejected as dishonest for the following reasons:

759.1. Mr Madden’s unchallenged expert evidence is that two distinct entries in the email’s transmission header indicate that the message provided in disclosure has been taken as a received item from the mailbox craig@rcjbr.org [PM21 [18-19]]. That conclusion is at odds with Dr Wright’s evidence that the message was not taken from his email system.

759.2. Mr Madden’s unchallenged evidence is also that another entry in the transmission header indicates that the email was authored on a computer, the network name for which was “cwright” and which had an assigned IP address of 14.1.17.85 (which corresponds to a location in New South Wales, Australia) [PM21 [14-17]]. There are a large number of other emails in disclosure with those identifiers which appear to come from Dr Wright. They are discussed in Appendix PM18.

759.3. Dr Wright’s account posits a bizarre sequence of events in which Ms Nguyen (or possibly someone else) supposedly faked this email with a view to helping him (somehow), after which it found its way from an unidentified staff laptop to the ATO, then to Ira Kleiman, then back to Dr Wright. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this story. Nor is there any explanation given for the supposed steps in the sequence of events (how the email was originally supposed to be deployed; how, why and by whom it was sent to the ATO; why the ATO sent it to Mr Kleiman; etc.).

759.4. The simple explanation, which fits with the unchallenged forensic findings, is that Dr Wright created this email to support his claim to be Satoshi and later disclosed it in his legal proceedings, but is now seeking to distance himself from a patently forged document.

(d) Conclusion

760. Dr Wright’s explanations are absurd. He plainly forged this email.