Blogs & Articles: The CryptoDevil Case 🔗 48 weeks ago

Australian tax fraud fugitive, convicted IP thief and notorious Satoshi Nakamoto cosplayer Craig Wright is still on a SLAPP spree

Written by Arthur van Pelt

ABOUT EDITS to this article: as more material may become available after the publication of this article, it could have edits and updates every now and then. In that sense, this article can be considered a work in progress, and become a reference piece for years to come.

The face of a ruined reputation: mugshot of Simon Cohen (Managing Associate | ONTIER UK · London)

“To be fair, and I’ve seen a fair share of lawyers in my career as I was specialized in implementing financial fraud detection software at large lawyer firms and trained 100s of lawyers how to use it, but I’ve never ever seen a lawyer with such a career death wish as @SimonCohen85” — Arthur van Pelt, Twitter

“@SimonCohen85 has no shame knowingly and willingly dropping perjurous material like witness statements and false, forged and fraudulent evidence of our cosplaying friend into any court room in the UK and abroad.” — Arthur van Pelt, Twitter

So what happened now again? Craig Wright, after trying and losing a handful of libel cases in the course of 2019–2022, still thinks, against all odds, that the courts are his friend and that he can use them to silence his opponents who regularly report about his multi facetted fraud. For his next SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) attempt he picked a very reputable but otherwise rather unknown(*) Twitter account called CryptoDevil.

(*) Of course, many of my followers know CryptoDevil. We wrote the “Faketoshi, The Early Years” series together. The undersigned is regularly retweeting notable tweets of CryptoDevil. CryptoDevil is a true powerhouse when it comes to his knowledge of the Craig Wright fraud saga. He is well known, and sports a spotless reputation, in the small circles of scam busters in the cryptocurrency industry since 2014. But in general, with a little over 550 Twitter followers at the moment — May 23, 2023 — of tweeting the material complained of by Craig Wright, I think it is fair to say that CryptoDevil is “rather unknown”.

This status of “rather unknown” is about to change rapidly, though. Let’s dive into the last few days, where we, for example, see his followers count pop some 15%. What exactly was “libelous” according Craig Wright, and what is CryptoDevil’s response to the accusations?

The Prelude

The rollercoaster of events started on May 25, 2023 when I noticed that CryptoDevil was mentioned in a filing in the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit. This lawsuit ended December 2021 when W&K (represented by Ira Kleiman) won $100 million for Conversion (IP theft). A few months later W&K won another $43 million in pre-judgment interest, making the total indebtness of Craig Wright with regards to this lawsuit $143 million. Parties have now reached the stage of W&K trying to collect this debt from a stubbornly not-paying judgment debtor Craig Wright. To cut a long story short, this ended in a contempt procedure around Craig Wright and his counsel Rivero Mestre, forcing Rivero Mestre to hire counsel for themselves to represent them in front of Magistrate Judge Reinhart.

Craig Wright and Bruce Reinhart know each other well. They are no friends in court.

The law firm that Rivero Mestre hired was Rabin Kammerer Johnson. One of the lawyers from that firm being hired is Adam Rabin, one of the founders. When that became known on May 16, 2023 “the very next day, Mr. Rabin received a lengthy e-mail from an anonymous person known by the Twitter handle “CryptoDevil””.

Source: CourtListener

Apparently, this was an impressive email, impressive enough that it received a mention in the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit. CryptoDevil shared this email with the world on Twitter on May 25, 2023, making it possible to republish it here in full.

Source: Twitter

The Opera

Was this email of CryptoDevil shared with Simon Cohen of ONTIER during the days following May 17? We can’t know for sure at this moment, but it appears very likely. Because on the same day, May 25, that CryptoDevil shared the email with his followers on Twitter, he also received the following 12 page letter from ONTIER. With eternal thanks to CryptoDevil for giving his permission, I’m allowed to publish the ONTIER letter here in full. On Twitter CryptoDevil only shared the first 3 pages on May 26, but as can be seen here, he actually received a far more hefty read:

As said, on May 26 (yesterday), CryptoDevil broke the news that he had received a libel lawsuit threat the day before, and that a public response would follow. CryptoDevil declared:

“Let me put together some information showing your client @Dr_CSWright to be a proven fugitive criminal rebate fraud”

And the undersigned couldn’t help noticing something.

Source: Twitter

Meanwhile, well known Bitcoin supporter ‘hodlonaut’ (experienced with Craig Wright libel cases as he won one against Craig Wright in Norway last year, more about that in “Bombshell Ruling: hodlonaut Wins On All Counts Against Craig Wright”) quickly figured out that Craig Wright’s libel claim was again, like all his libel claims so far, rooted in fraud with his counsel ONTIER being complicit again in spreading that fraud.

Let’s have a look at hodlonaut his tweetstorm.

“I spent some time today looking into the circumstances and facts around the legal letter sent to @CryptoDevil from @dr_cswright and his lawyers at @ONTIERLLP yesterday, threatening legal action against him. I found some, imho, very interesting stuff.

Timeline:

— May 23rd: Tweet complained of #1 is tweeted out
— May 24th: Tweet complained of #2 and #3 are tweeted out
— May 24th: @CryptoDevil notices lots of engagement from accounts that shill BSV
— May 25th: @CryptoDevil receives the Legal letter from @ONTIERLLP

On page two of the legal letter, @ONTIERLLP references the May 23rd tweet specifically, describing it as “extensively liked, retweeted and quote-tweeted”. It goes into further detail about the engagement, describing that the tweet has been liked 76 times and retweeted 16 times.

Ok, let’s look closer at which accounts retweeted the May 23rd tweet… And keep in mind that @cryptodevil noticed unusual engagement on May 24th. These screenshots show 15 of the 16 accounts that had retweeted at the time of the legal letter.

I visited each account and their tweet/retweet history. Most of them seem to be African, 6 of them Nigerian. They all have one thing in common: Extensive retweeting of BSV accounts like @RealCoinGeek, @calvinayre, @kurtwuckertjr, @LDN_Blockchain, @Bitcoin_SV_, @BitcoinAssn

Several of the accounts have also, in addition to retweeting pro-BSV tweets, replied to BSV promoting tweets where they among other things vouch for CSW as Satoshi and praise the virtues of BSV.

— Why would these accounts be so hyped about BSV, so convinced Craig is Satoshi and at the same time retweet @cryptodevil‘s very anti-BSV tweets?
 — Why did these 15 retweets happen the day before @ONTIERLLP referenced “extensive engagement” and 16 retweets in a legal letter? (Arthur: emphasis mine)

I’ll end this thread with screenshots from all these 15 accounts, showing just a small selection of their recent activity. There is much more to see for those who want to look for themselves. The accounts show impressive coordination in retweeting certain BSV promoting tweets.”

As the bombshell point has just been made, please continue reading the tweetstorm of hodlonaut on Twitter here. And the TL;DR version goes like this:

Source: Twitter

An extremely well respected Bitcoiner known from his Twitter account “WizSec Bitcoin Research” took over from here, and quote tweeted the hodlonaut tweetstorm today. Their critical comment in full:

“This shouldn’t be surprising by now, but this is astonishingly shameless. In order to threaten @CryptoDevil with a libel lawsuit, the people behind BSV themselves amplified his tweet with fake engagement and then cited those very retweets in their letter as evidence of harm!

@ONTIERLLP has vigorously assisted in a long line of vexatious litigation filled with blatant misrepresentations and abuse of process, but this is perhaps the most egregious example yet — and that’s saying something! Do they really want to try to defend this in front of a judge?

Any judge ought to rightfully instantly dismiss a libel case and award all costs due to this kind of misconduct, but the fact that Ontier *still* won’t fact check their client’s claims (despite years of being caught lying countless times) is indefensible and warrants sanctions.

No matter what other evidence they subsequently try to dig up (or manufacture!) as justification, good luck trying to argue a defamation case when your side willfully spread the “defamation” just to get something to complain about.”

Meme by WizSec

Just before publication of this article, CryptoDevil his response to the libel lawsuit threat was put on Twitter. It being worthy of a read is an understatement. Remember, this is what ONTIER claims on behalf of their client Craig Wright in their letter to CryptoDevil.

“1. For @ONTIERLLP a thread showing your client @Dr_CSWright to be a fugitive criminal rebate fraudster AND a conman! If it’s false, I’ll retract and apologise, fair? Pro-tip: Due diligence is more than just asking your client if he’s guilty.

2. Here’s Craig himself, claiming to own bitcoin addresses as part of his tax rebate scam which actually belonged to the MtGox ‘found wallet’ discovered only a few months later!

REBATE FRAUD PROVEN

Oh there’s a ton more than this but this on its own is verifiable proof of fraud.

3. Craig’s OWN recollection of hiding from @AusFedPolice on his way to fleeing @Australia - the very definition of fugitive!

Your client is explicitly describing himself hiding and speeding away from police who were pursuing him.

Do you need a dictionary for this one?

4. @AusFedPolice searching for Craig and gathering evidence in relation to an @ato_gov_au investigation.

(into that multi-million-dollar fake-bitcoins-to-real-cash criminal rebate fraud I showed you proof of earlier, it turned out!)

5. Here’s Craig caught out having lied in the @NSWSupCt for financial gain when he knowingly perjured himself by claiming W&K IP was in use by @USDoDGov and @DHSgov.

He, THE INSTIGATOR AND PRIMARY CONTACT, pleaded ignorance on the subject of the failed US R&D grant applications.

(Note Arthur: the next 3 images were attached to this tweet)

6. Here’s Craig claiming he can’t be under criminal investigation because he insists there’s no such unit at the @ato_gov_au.

(Yeah, I know, this isn’t proof of fraud but it IS proof of his extraordinary compulsion to lie about easily-proven things — he’s blatantly dishonest)

7. Here’s Craig’s handlers telling him about the @ato_gov_au Criminal Investigation unit conducting their Criminal Investigation into that multi-million-dollar fake-bitcoins-to-real-cash rebate fraud I proved earlier, saying they’d be willing to fly to the UK to interview him.

8. Here’s Craig’s handlers advising him against taking part in a voluntary recorded interview with the @ato_gov_au ‘s Criminal Investigation unit, or the @AusFedPolice for that matter.

9. And of course, here’s Melanie from the @ato_gov_au Criminal Investigations unit reminding us that years later there is still an ongoing Criminal Investigation into Craig But, sure, he told you he’s not under criminal investigation and that’s enough due diligence for you!

10. Here’s Craig being an actual conman scamming a loan from @CalvinAyre with a paper wallet as security — PROVEN to be a forgery!

(Let alone all the other facts proving the exchange he claimed he bought it from didn’t even sell bitcoin at the time etc)

(Note Arthur: the next 3 images were attached to this tweet)

WizSec Bitcoin Research on Twitter: "A brief history of Craig Wright's false claims to own the @1FeexV6 Bitcoin address containing 80k BTC (one of many addresses he's claimed to own even though they belong to other people), over which he's launched a spurious lawsuit to harass Bitcoin developers: / Twitter"

A brief history of Craig Wright's false claims to own the @1FeexV6 Bitcoin address containing 80k BTC (one of many addresses he's claimed to own even though they belong to other people), over which he's launched a spurious lawsuit to harass Bitcoin developers:

11. Here’s Craig in court in the @hodlonaut case…ADMITTING TO FORGERY!

(Note Arthur: video embedded in tweet at the bottom:)

CryptoDevil on Twitter: "11. Here's Craig in court in the @hodlonaut case...ADMITTING TO FORGERY! pic.twitter.com/skKjmDFx6t / Twitter"

11. Here's Craig in court in the @hodlonaut case...ADMITTING TO FORGERY! pic.twitter.com/skKjmDFx6t

12. You can have this one for free — a bonus of @Dr_CSWright committing fraud in YOUR jurisdiction @ONTIERLLP by fraudulently having a backdated AP01 filed for a man who was long-dead BEFORE Craig even asked the agent what aged shelf companies they had available for him to buy!

13. So, @ONTIERLLP , you can see why I honestly believe my statements about your client being a fugitive criminal rebate fraudster (AND a conman!) to be true. Because ALL the documented evidence shows him being these things.”

Amen to all that, CryptoDevil. When I read the ONTIER letter and came across their hilarious claim “our client has not committed tax fraud”, I immediately had to think about an ATO report with quotes like “the evidence provided to us was manufactured by [Craig Wright] in an attempt to deceive us” and “the documentation was created by [Craig Wright] in order to fraudulently deceive the ATO and support the false and misleading statements made by [him] in [his] 2012–13 income tax return.”.

This is called ‘tax fraud’, ONTIER. Due diligence much?

Anyway. All we can do now is wait for the response of Craig Wright and his counsel ONTIER. Will they push through with this baseless threat of “issue and serve proceedings for libel and harassment”, a threat delivered to CryptoDevil only for SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) reasons? Time will tell.

And how about CryptoDevil? Will CryptoDevil pull a CobraBitcoin (who, for security and privacy reasons, did not show up in court, and who heard a default judgment drop against him for that reason), or will CryptoDevil go the hodlonaut route, and fight Craig Wright’s libel accusations in front of a judge in the UK?

Source: Twitter

And equally important, does this SLAPP event have a chilling effect on the rest of the Bitcoin and Craig Wright debunk community?

No. Not in the slightest.

Not one single threat, not one single lawsuit from the Calvin Ayre and Craig Wright camp will ever change the determination to expose Craig Wright’s ugly fraud. The message will continue to be:

• Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.
• Craig Wright is a liar and a fraud.
• And BSV is not Bitcoin.

“They can take down individuals and they can try to destroy some of their enjoyment of life like they are doing with McCormack and Hodlonaut. But for every person they try to silence at least another 100 get outraged and angry. The Streisand effect is real.” — xtranaut, Twitter

Meanwhile, enjoy some of the nuggets that are being pulled from a massive treasure box of Craig Wright self-owns and forgeries. Whatever happens to our friend CryptoDevil (and we all wish him well, and we will support him through hell and back till the bloody end!), these Craig Wright fraud facts will keep popping up for whoever wants — or needs — to consume them.

Source: TwitterSource: Twitter

EDIT MAY 30, 2023: CryptoDevil writes to ONTIER

From: Crypto Devil
Date: Tue, May 30, 2023 at 3:52 PM
Subject: Craig Wright
To: Derek Stinson, Simon Cohen, Dion Stewart

Dear Ontier,

Your ref: DS/SC/WEI2.1.6
Our ref: GFY/CSW

Further to your letter sent via Twitter direct message dated 25 May 2023, I confirm receipt and acknowledge its contents. For future correspondence please feel free to reach me on this email address I am writing to you from. I am endeavouring to respond to your letter well in advance of the stated deadline of 4pm on 5 June 2023, given that I am cognisant of the fact you, as sponsors, and your client may be busy with his ‘BSV’-related event in London during the period 31 May to 2 June, so I wish to provide ample time for you to formulate a response.

With regards to your requirement that I provide you with my full name and address, I remain so far unconvinced that your client has a case against me and so will not provide such as yet. Were I to be compelled by a convincing rebuttal, or court order to do so I will readily comply. While your client is free to choose to make an application to a court to compel disclosure of this information by me and/or third parties I would like to draw your attention to the following facts:

• Your letter specifically cites 3 tweets, going on to describe them as having been “extensively ‘liked’, retweeted and quote-tweeted” and, further, that my tweet of 23 May 2023 had, as at the issuance of your letter, “received 76 ‘likes’” and had been “retweeted / quote tweeted 16 times” and “been bookmarked once”
• As per my tweet of 25 May 2023, referencing a tweet of mine from 24 May 2023 where I had noticed an unusual and sudden up-tick in my tweet engagements of what otherwise has been, by my own admission, a twitter account with a somewhat small and very modest social media reach, commenting that I had observed that a large number of accounts which are generally used by your client, his associates and/or their related entities, to promote their ‘BSV’ crypto token and related marketing, had been responsible for the majority of said engagements. This observation, along with the Twitter analytics you also cite the need to retain evidence of, was reinforced through the kind work of Twitter user @hodlonaut who, entirely independently and of his own volition, chose to analyse and, likewise, confirm that his findings matched mine and clearly proved that the majority of the complained of tweet engagements were the direct result of ‘BSV’ social media marketing accounts, showing that your client, his associates and/or their related entities were, themselves, by way of instruction and/or funding, responsible for the majority of the complained of tweet ‘likes’, ‘quotes’ and ‘re-tweets’. I would also point out that any claim by your client that their ‘BSV’ social-media ‘engagement farm’ had perhaps inadvertently engaged with my tweets simply because they happened to mention him or his ‘BSV’ crypto token or related events, is readily proven to not be credible on the basis that none of my prior tweets, which regularly cited same, were likewise amplified.
• Subsequent to this artificial engagement that accounts known to be controlled and/or funded by your client, his associates and/or their related entities, along with the fact that, in order to ensure that I make it clearly apparent that your client disputed my statements, I let it be known that you had been instructed by him to notify me of his complaint and threat to sue me for libel that day, resulted in what is generally known as a phenomenon termed ‘the Streisand effect’, namely, that a complaint made by a public figure against an otherwise little-known entity results in it becoming a greater public interest than it otherwise ever would have been, drawing ever more scrutiny and engagement. So any additional engagement of my tweets has been rooted in your client’s own actions.

While I am no legal expert myself, I have already previously suffered at the hands of an unethical lawyer, whereby my merely cooperating with legally-served documents several years ago requiring that I assist in the recovery of many millions of dollars the client of an English lawyer had been proven to have stolen, resulted in said English lawyer becoming so enraged that he endeavoured to defame me to all of my business clients, making provably false allegations, resulting, as he no doubt intended, in the total loss of confidence of my clients at the time and the withdrawing of their commercial engagements, thereby catastrophically destroying my business and ruining me financially. So, while I am not a legal expert I am, however, already quite familiar with both the effect of genuinely malicious defamation and the reporting processes required by the UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the regulatory body which oversees you and your industry.

The reason I bring this personal anecdote up is twofold. Firstly, I absolutely have sympathy for anybody who is wrongfully and maliciously defamed, having experienced it and the deleterious repercussions from such myself, so I will willingly take whatever action necessary to rectify any proven wrongdoing if warranted and, secondly, said experience extends to the actual process required to lodge complaints with the SRA that will result in them taking possible disciplinary action against those who breach the UK solicitors ‘code of conduct’. What is required, according to the response I received having provided them with irrefutable proof of the aforementioned defamation and resulting financial loss I incurred, is that they require that a judge explicitly criticise said lawyer in order for them to properly build a case they can take action on.

Given that I have laid out the proof for you to clearly understand that the evidence shows your client intentionally appears to be, yet again, (see: Wright v McCormack [2022] EWHC 3343 (KB) (21 December 2022 — “Dr Wright had advanced a deliberately false case until shortly before trial. When the falsity was exposed, he changed his case, explaining that he had made inadvertent errors. I rejected that explanation as untrue.”), advancing a deliberately false case in artificially inflating my tweet engagements ahead of initiating action against me which cited said engagement figures, I don’t imagine that a judge would be too impressed with a complainant seeking to pursue a defamation case so artificially and dishonestly premised, nor their counsel for continuing to act for their client in progressing said case while being fully aware of its dishonest basis. So I would caution against ignoring the fact that your client appears to be leading you into a potential exposure to the risk of reputational and professional harm, should a judge, likewise, deem your continued support of your client’s action in the face of the proven facts warrants criticism.

As is also proven in publicly-available contemporaneous court records, as part of a previous legal action’s discovery process, your client has a history of lying to his legal counsel (see: Andrew Sommer of Clayton Utz letter dated 6 July 2015) and, indeed, exposing him to personal and professional risk through having provided him with, what were proven to be, fabricated emails he intended to rely on for his defence in the investigations relating to your client’s multimillion-dollar cash rebates predicated on business activities he had claimed had occurred through bitcoin addresses he is now proven to have lied about owning and/or controlling, which the Australian authorities were investigating him over. So you really cannot rely on your client’s word as to the truth of the matter because the documented evidence shows him repeatedly lying and presenting falsehoods to counsel, courts, colleagues and the public in general.

To demonstrate further, in addition to the examples I provide to you in my currently-‘pinned’ tweet thread dated 27 May 2023 showing your client even going so far as to knowingly lie about the existence of a ‘Criminal Investigations’ unit at the Australian Taxation Office, I refer you to my tweet of 3 February 2023 which shows your client firstly claiming that the reason there is no video record of the break-in he claimed resulted in the planting of a ‘pineapple’ hacking device he asserts was responsible for compromising his home computer systems and stealing copies of his wallets and/or private keys to the vast stashes of bitcoin he has never been able to prove ownership of, due to the UK security firm ‘ADT’ suffering a datacentre failure and losing ‘all the records’, as well as then claiming that the police “checked into that and it just happens that simultaneously several outages across multiples companies occurred right at the same time”, only for the twitter account for ADT UK (@ADT_UK) to respond to this by refuting this claim entirely and confirming that “no such disruption occurred”, to which your client responded with the statement “Who stated data centre” and “There is no claim that the data centre was down”, in direct contradiction to his initial explicit claim that ADT UK had experienced a “datacentre failure and lost all the records”. In that he is proven to be lying about this matter it is only reasonable to believe that the police, likewise, asserted no such thing with regards to his claim that ‘several outages across multiple companies occurred right at the same time’, but I’m sure you could establish the veracity of this yourself by reaching out to the Surrey Police and confirming either way, given that your firm is representing him in legal action he and/or his related entities are taking in supposed ‘recovery’ of the bitcoin he alleges he lost access to as a result.

Moreover, in Wright v Ryan & Anor [2005] NSWCA 368 (27 October 2005), where your client had sought to “appeal from a conviction for a criminal offence”, where previous court hearings had found that your client had both lied AND defied the judge’s subsequent ruling, resulting in the judge stating, “In my view Mr Wright’s deliberate flouting of his undertaking makes this a serious offence. His lack of contrition exacerbates its seriousness. There is a need to bring home to a contemnor the seriousness of his contempt. For the purposes of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999, s 5(2) these are my reasons for my determining that a sentence of imprisonment is required in this case. I propose to sentence Craig Wright to a term of imprisonment of 28 days.” which, while this sentence was ultimately suspended on the condition that your client would perform 250 hours of community service, his later attempted appeal against said criminal conviction was dismissed with costs.

Let me clarify, I don’t bring these facts up in this email to mock or belittle your client, I do so to ensure that there is documented evidence that these facts have been brought to your attention, so that it can be seen that you were alerted to pertinent information which proves your client to be an untrustworthy individual predisposed to lying in order to avoid taking responsibility for his own actions. Something I believe is important for you to be aware of for basing your future decisions on when it comes to representing him, as well as helping to serve to demonstrate the basis for my honest social media comment regularly posted about your client, so that you may better counsel him on the decision to advance a case against me, or not.

Your firm has progressed a demonstrably extensive litany of cases on behalf of your client and his related entities (as per your own website), indeed all 10 cases currently listed in your ‘Lawsuits’ section bear his name or that of his supposed ‘Tulip Trust’. So your client’s conduct and standing in these matters is absolutely relevant to your choice to continue acting for him. I note that in many of these cases judges found your client to have been wholly dishonest in his myriad assertions and “straightforwardly false in almost every material respect”.

Which brings me to the content of the tweets complained of. What I gather, according to your letter of 25 May 2023, is that your client objects to my use of the comments utilising terms such as “fugitive criminal rebate fraud” when he no doubt has insisted to you that he is none of these things. In my currently-’pinned’ tweet-thread I address this by providing you with the factual evidence which leads me to unequivocally believe that using said terms are fair and, indeed, honest comment, particularly in reference to the fact that your client is a public figure, that your client, being responsible for the creation of the ‘BSV’ crypto token network, where he has also gone on to introduce a mechanism by which he could even order coins to be ‘seized’ from any address on its blockchain, means that there is both a great deal of public interest in him as well as a requirement of those who buy his ‘BSV’ crypto token to have to trust in him that he will not abuse his position of power and control over the ‘BSV’ network. By his own assertion, as per his Twitter profile page he is categorised as working in ‘Financial Services’, so honesty and trustworthiness is clearly of paramount importance.

In this regards, I draw your attention to both your client’s email to Michael Hardy of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) dated 9 October 2013, as well as his reference throughout his claims concerning the supposed ‘Tulip Trust’ holdings, which your firm must already be familiar with given that it is representing it on his behalf in legal actions against over a dozen individuals, businesses and entities who are being forced to defend themselves at great expense against such, whereby, as part of a collection of bitcoin addresses he asserts had funded many of the business activities he had made multi-million-dollar cash rebate claims for during the years 2013/14 and 2015, it includes reference in particular to three addresses ‘1MyGw’, ‘16Ls6’ and ‘1cXNT’ he claims ownership and/or control of, containing the balance of 30,000.04, 40,000.04 and 40,000.04 bitcoins respectively.

Only a few months subsequent to the date of this email to the ATO which, as I mentioned, formed the very basis for your client’s extensive cash rebate claims, these three addresses were, in fact, proven to actually belong to the MtGox bitcoin exchange as part of its ‘found wallet’ cold storage. The bitcoin blockchain publicly provides for a verifiable cryptographic chain of signatures which proves, beyond doubt, that your client did not own, nor was anything to do with, these three addresses.

It should be noted that many other addresses in this email, and additionally in the even more extensive list your client claims the supposed ‘Tulip Trust’ holds, have also been subsequently proven to be nothing to do with your client, nor any related entities. The ‘16cou’ address, he stated he, and subsequently the supposed ‘Tulip Trust’, controlled, holding 53,000.04 bitcoins, was also proven to be controlled by somebody else entirely who posted a publicly-verifiable cryptographically-validated message refuting your client’s claim of ownership, stating that this specific address “does not belong to Satoshi or to Craig wright. Craig is a liar and a fraud”. You can verify this fact quite easily — (see twitter user @bchautist tweet dated 5 May 2023 which includes a text paste for you to validate the message yourself).

That your client knowingly committed rebate fraud, a criminal act, is evidenced by these facts because they objectively show that neither he, nor his related business entities, owned or controlled the bitcoins he was claiming had funded multi-million-dollar business activities for which he had received substantial cash rebate payments.

As for my describing your client as a fugitive, “The Satoshi Affair written by the highly-regarded author, Andrew O’Hagan, contains vivid and unambiguous descriptions of your client ‘hiding’ and ‘speeding’ away from the Australian Federal Police who were pursuing him in relation to a criminal investigation into the aforementioned rebate fraud with, at one point, a detail of how “He went to the furthest cubicle and deliberately kept the door unlocked. (He figured the police would just look for an engaged sign.) He was standing on top of the toilet when he heard the officers come in.” before hurriedly seeking a flight out of the country, all the while describing his palpable fear that he might be prevented from doing so were he to be discovered. This is your client conveying a description of himself being the very epitome of a fugitive from the authorities and fleeing the country.

I hope you can see from the above that this, as well as vast swathes of additional evidence I am also familiar with should you require further proof, serves to prove that I absolutely have every reason to believe your client to be the things I have commented on him to be in my social media posts, as well as perhaps helping to broaden your knowledge with regards to a more enhanced degree of due diligence awareness you are able to now have about your client and his history.

Saying that, however, if none of the above serves to adequately show your client being the very things I have commented on him to be, in that your client is perhaps able to explain how they are not factual and are, perhaps, falsehoods, I propose this counter offer that, given the gravity of the situation, not only will I comply with your client’s demand that I retract my statements, apologise and cease further such commentary, I will gladly, should there still be time, travel to attend your client’s upcoming ‘BSV’ crypto token promotional event in London and publicly apologise on stage to your client. I think this would only be fair and just if he were, indeed, able to show credible explanation for why the presented evidence I have based my commentary about him on was, in fact, false.

I look forward to receiving a response from you to advise as to anything further you may require, any pertinent rebuttal of the above from your client and/or whether you will be assisting your client in advancing defamation proceedings against me, as detailed in your 25 May letter, or not.

Regards,
CryptoDevil

EDIT JUNE 13, 2023: CryptoDevil writes to ONTIER again

On this day, we learn from a tweet from CryptoDevil that he wrote another email to Craig Wright’s counsel ONTIER.

“Given the public interest in the public figure @dr_cswright and his various economic activities, I attach a copy of my request today for @ONTIERLLP, @SimonCohen85 & co to find some time in their busy schedule to respond to my email of 14 days ago.”

Source: Twitter

EDIT JUNE 20, 2023: CryptoDevil writes to ONTIER once more

On this day, we learn from a tweet from CryptoDevil that he wrote again to Craig Wright’s counsel ONTIER, as he had still not received an answer.

“Well this is getting tiresome. Once again, given the public interest in public figure @dr_cswright I attach a copy of my SECOND emailed request for @ONTIERLLP, @SimonCohen85 & co to respond with an update to the threat of advancing a defamation case against me for posting facts.”

Source: Twitter

EDIT JULY 15, 2023: CryptoDevil writes to Craig’s new counsel (and as per July 25, 2023 no reply has been received).

Yesterday we learned from a tweet from CryptoDevil that he wrote to Craig Wright’s new counsel Travers Smith, as he had still not received an answer from Craig’s previous counsel ONTIER.

“Here we go again, this is what I sent to conman @dr_cswright ‘s new counsel @traverssmith last week to see if they’re going to do what @ONTIERLLP failed to do. You have until Tuesday: “Otherwise I will be forced to assume that your client admits that his allegations were baseless””

CryptoDevil his email to Travers Smith reads in full:

From: Crypto Devil <cryptodevil@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 4, 2023 at 12:03 PM
Subject: Craig Wright
To: <Huw.Jenkin@traverssmith.com>, <John.Lee@traverssmith.com>, <Tim.Knight@traverssmith.com>, <Imogen.Nolan@traverssmith.com>, <Alfred.Fabian@traverssmith.com>, <kate.child@traverssmith.com>, <michaella.demetriou@traverssmith.com>, <Kasope.Sonola@traverssmith.com>, <harriet.lawrence@traverssmith.com>
Cc: <derek.stinson@ontier.co.uk>, <simon.cohen@ontier.co.uk>, <dion.stewart@ontier.co.uk>

Dear Travers Smith,

Your ref: Craig Steven Wright

Our ref: GFY/CSW/2.0

I am writing with regards to a new client of yours, Mr Craig Steven Wright, for whom you are now acting as counsel in relation to a number of ongoing legal actions. Prior to your firm taking Mr Wright on as a client his previous counsel, Ontier LLP (copied in), had sent me a letter ahead of action via Twitter direct message (Attachments: Ontier1–7) advising that Mr Wright was intending on pursuing a defamation case against me for having made posts labelling him as being a ‘criminal’, a ‘conman’, a ‘rebate fraudster’ and a ‘fugitive’, citing engagement figures (likes, comments and retweets) said posts had garnered from other twitter user accounts as evidence of the supposed reach of the posts and, therefore, the supposed harm to their client’s reputation from said posts.

In their letter of 25 May 2023 (ref: DS/SC/WEI2.1.6), which they stated was written in compliance with the Pre-Action Protocol for Defamation applicable to claims in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, Ontier demanded that I provide them with my full name, email address and postal address in order to facilitate future communications, threatening that, should I refuse to provide these details, their client would take steps to ascertain them by other means, including, if necessary, the making of applications to court to compel disclosure of this information by me and/or third parties.

I strongly disagreed with the assertion that their client had a valid case against me and so informed them that while I would not yet be willing to hand over my full name and postal address for what I believed was a grossly inaccurate claim proven through tweet analytics to have been premised on a dishonest and artificially-inflated engagement by their client and/or his associates who took steps to increase the reach of the complained-of tweets and then engaged their counsel to initiate action based on the supposed reach of the complained-of tweets (https://twitter.com/hodlonaut/status/1662475535757324289 and Attachment: BSV engagement farm retweets), you can see from the extensive reply I promptly sent them by email in rebuttal below that I was clearly willing to enter into a dialogue in regards to the allegations raised by Mr Wright, whereby I took great pains to provide both him and Ontier with the factual proofs supporting the choice of words used in my posts referencing the evidence of his past history of criminality, multi-million-dollar tax rebate fraud and that he was, indeed, a fugitive who fled Australia as per both contemporaneous news reporting of the time and a first-hand account of his hiding and ‘speeding away’ from the police who were looking for him, before arranging to take a flight out of the country, describing how he feared he would be prevented from doing so, given to the respected author Andrew O’Hagan, they have failed to respond in any way whatsoever.

My rebuttal letter (below) was sent on 30 May 2023 via email directly to Simon Cohen, as well as Ontier’s Managing Partner Derek Stinson and paralegal Dion Stewart, as they had explicitly required, along with two follow up emails, sent 13 June and 20 June, respectively, requesting that they advise as to the status of the threatened legal action. In that I very much sought to seek clarification on whether any of the factual proof I was relying on was perhaps erroneous or false, I expressed how mortified I would be to think that I had somehow misinterpreted the extensive record of emails, contracts, court records, judgements and legal documents which purport to show your client having committed a litany of perjurious and fraudulent acts in the years prior to his hasty departure from Australia with the Federal Police and Tax Office investigators seeking to interview him and so made a counter-offer in which, if this was shown to be the case, I would endeavour to set the record straight and seek to ameliorate the damage to your client’s reputation he believed my posts had caused him.

It has since become apparent that Mr Wright may have subsequently ceased being a client of Ontier’s and so I have been left not knowing whether there remains an active case against me or even, perhaps, as his new counsel, your firm is taking over the matter for which, if this is the case, I would seek urgent clarification from you on whether the rebuttal I provided seeking to demonstrate ample proof of the basis by which I believe my public statements about your client’s financial dealings are true has served to settle the matter, or whether he remains intent on advancing it further.

To re-iterate, some of the documented evidence I rely on to support the statements I make online about your client present the following facts, namely, that he:

1. Lost an appeal against a conviction and sentence for a criminal offence of contempt of court in 2005 and, as he has done frequently in the decades since, attempted to blame ‘hackers’ for the evidence of his guilt. (https://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWCA/2005/368.html, Attachment: 1 — CSW blaming unknown hackers 2003)

2. Perjured himself in two New South Wales Supreme Court actions he initiated in 2013, whereby he claimed a defunct empty-shell US company ‘W&K’, he and his deceased former business partner Dave Kleiman had incorporated to make four failed applications for R&D funding from the US Government, had valuable IP and software he claimed ownership of as the basis for much of the substance of his claimed business activities underpinning his multi-million-dollar cash rebates in Australia, ascribing an extremely high dollar value to said IP and software by falsely asserting it was in use by the US DoD and Department of Homeland Security, while later denying to the ATO investigators any knowledge of the research funding submissions, when the records show he had been the instigator and primary point of contact for these failed applications. (Attachments: 2 — CSW Proposing making funding application to DK, 3 — CSW US funding application submission, 4 — CSW denial of involvement in funding application to ATO)

3. Claimed that the multi-million-dollar funding of business activities he’d submitted millions of dollars in cash rebates for from the Australian tax authorities, were conducted by way of bitcoin transactions to and from large-value bitcoin addresses which have been proven, through irrefutable blockchain analysis and cryptographically-validated messages, to have belonged to other, entirely unrelated, people and/or businesses. For example, three bitcoin addresses ( 16Ls6azc76ixc9Ny7AB5ZPPq6oiEL9XwXy,1cXNTyXj4xPGopfYZNY5xfSM1EPJJvBZV,1MyGwFAJjVtB5rGJa32M6Yh46cGirUta1K ) were used as the basis for his submitting large cash rebate claims in 2013 from the Australian tax authority which Mr Wright had asserted were owned by him, were either directly under his control and/or formed part of his claimed ‘Tulip Trust’ holdings, but have actually been proven to have formed part of the previously forgotten, and subsequently found in March 2014, wallet belonging to the Japan-based MtGox bitcoin exchange, having been placed by them into these ‘cold storage’ addresses from as early as 2011. Meaning neither Mr Wright, nor his businesses or the supposed ‘Tulip Trust’ could have owned them, transacted with them or had anything to do with them. (Attachments: 5 — CSW false claim of bitcoin ownership to ATO, 6 — CSW false rebate claim using 1MyG address, 7 — CSW false claim of Tulip Trust owning 1MyG address, 8 — MtGox Found Wallet addresses, 9 — Reuters 2014 MtGox Found wallet article)

4. Failed to show any proof that he had the necessary private keys to the dozens of bitcoin addresses he’d claimed formed both the pool of funds for his companies in an email he had sent to the tax authorities, leading the investigators to conclude that he had been making false and misleading statements, finding that he had, on numerous occasions, shown ‘intentional disregard’ in knowingly being dishonest and making a ‘deliberate choice to ignore the law’ #878, Att. #12 in Kleiman v. Wright (S.D. Fla., 9:18-cv-80176) — CourtListener.com as well as an even more extensive list of bitcoin addresses forming what was found by forensic experts to be a fabricated back-dated ‘Deed of Loan’ for his claimed ‘Tulip Trust’ holdings, proving to contain further addresses known to be owned by entirely unrelated people and/or businesses. (Attachments: 10 — CSW failing to sign bitcoin addresses for ATO, 11 — Backdated fabricated deed of loan for Tulip Trust, 12 — Backdated fabricated deed of loan addresses, 13 — MtGox found wallet Addresses on Tulip Trust deed of loan, 14 — Signed 16cou address on Tulip Trust deed of loan, 15 — Dishonest and intentional disregard for the law)

5. Had AP01 forms filed in April 2014 with knowingly false information for a UK company he’d claimed was a trustee of his supposed ‘Tulip Trust’, appointing his former business partner Dave Kleiman as Director and backdating his appointment to 2012, only a short while after Mr Wright had even enquired as to the available ‘aged shelf companies’ the UK formation agent (CFS Formations) had available for sale and purchasing this particular one (reg number 08248988) and LONG after Mr Kleiman had died (April 2013). (Attachments: 11 — Backdated fabricated deed of loan for Tulip Trust, 16 — CSW fraudulent backdated AP01)

6. Was dropped as a client by his Australian tax lawyers, Clayton Utz, for having passed them doctored emails purporting to be FROM the ATO that his lawyer, Andrew Sommer, was intending to rely on for Mr Wright’s defence in these matters, which the ATO had shown were never sent by their office. (Attachments: 17 — Andrew Sommer email re forged ATO emails, 18 — Clayton Utz terminating re forged emails)

7. Been found to have attempted to prevent or obstruct the tax authorities through such acts as providing the ATO investigators with faked screenshots of a bitcoin wallet purporting to show ownership of the ‘1933’ address which was proven to have been doctored, along with myriad other actions he took to mislead them, extensively detailed in their findings report dated 16 March 2016 (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/878/12/kleiman-v-wright/) and ‘Reason for Decision’ (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/547/7/kleiman-v-wright/), when the simple fact is that he could have exonerated himself entirely by simply cryptographically validating his control of these addresses had he actually owned them as he’d claimed to. (Attachments: 19 — ATO report citing faked bitcoin wallet screenshot, 20 — CSW doctored Bitcoin wallet screenshot to ATO

8. Fabricated a proven-fake ‘paper wallet’ for the infamous ‘1Feex’ address which features in his claimed holdings for the ‘Tulip Trust’ and, as the contemporaneous email correspondence records of the time show, utilised it as the basis for ‘escrow’ security for a multi-million-dollar commercial and personal funding agreement he entered into with investors he’d convinced into believing he possessed a vast fortune in bitcoin wealth he was claiming to be temporarily unable to access. (Attachments: 21 — CSW claiming to own paper wallet for 1Feex, 22 — Experts proving 1Feex paper wallet is fake)

9. Secured the aforementioned commercial and personal funding agreements then departed Australia still having failed to EVER proven ownership of a single address he’d based millions of dollars of cash rebates on and with criminal investigators seeking to question him in relation to an active criminal investigation. (Attachments: 23 — Federal Police search of CSW properties, 24 — ATO Criminal Investigators seizing CSW data, 25 — ATO Criminal Investigators wanting to interview CSW, 26 — ATO Criminal Investigation 2018)

As I stated in my original reply to Ontier, if the above facts are somehow false I will readily agree to your client’s demands that I publicly apologise and retract my previously-posted twitter statements, which are solely intended to alert the public to these facts showing your client, a public figure currently working in the financial services industry, having been involved in serious financial impropriety.

If, however, the facts as documented are correct than your client doesn’t have a valid claim of defamation against me and, what is more, you can consider this correspondence as a public record that your firm was alerted to these important due-diligence matters and consider how this may reflect on your continued engagement by Mr Wright as counsel in his active cases against the Bitcoin developers and others whereby it would make it apparent he is, yet again, as per Justice Chamberlain’s findings in Mr Wright’s defamation case against Peter McCormack (https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/KB/2022/3343.html), “advancing a deliberately false case” and risking the reputational integrity of your firm in much the same way as he did when passing fabricated evidence to his tax lawyer in 2015.

The fact that his own claim of his home network in the UK being ‘hacked’ in 2020 and ‘losing’ the keys to a vast amount of bitcoin he’s NEVER been able to cryptographically validate ownership of, and has, in fact, provided myriad proven-fake ‘proof’ for, by way of a device planted during a break-in he asserted the police had informed him there had been an ‘outage’ at the security company’s datacentre as explanation for there being no security camera footage showing such, to which the security company themselves publicly and explicitly refuted any such outage had occurred (Attachment: 27 — ADT refuting CSW claim about outage), coupled with the fact that your client has a long history of providing colleagues, courts and counsel with evidence which is repeatedly proven to have been fabricated and then blaming ‘hackers’ when it is exposed as such, should at the very least beg the question of why your client’s history prior to, and since, departing his home country displays every behaviour as would be expected of somebody who committed multi-million-dollar tax rebate fraud premised on bitcoin he never owned and has been trying to cover his tracks ever since. Occam’s razor, surely, must apply. Unless, of course, I am greatly mistaken about the validity of the myriad court documents, evidenced correspondence, contracts and companies house filings.

Either way, I would ask that you establish exactly what your client’s intentions are with regards to his threat of progressing the case against me as it is wholly unconscionable for him and his previous counsel to initiate such and then, when I have shown great willingness to engage on the issues raised, to refuse to provide any update on the status of said claim in reply to my prompt and detailed rebuttal. I must insist that you either respond or indicate a reasonable alternative timeframe for a response within two weeks of receipt of this email. Otherwise I will be forced to assume that your client admits that his allegations were baseless and that the letter he instructed his former counsel to send was intended solely to silence my fair comment of a public figure actively involved in the finance industry in the UK with a proven history of dishonest financial dealings.

Regards,

CryptoDevil

That’s all folks, for the moment. Thanks for reading!

It is currently unknown why this post of CryptoDevil appears to be ‘acceptable’ according Craig Wright

The CryptoDevil Case was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.