COPA Uncovers Manipulated Bank Statements in Wright's Claim to Be Satoshi Nakamoto

27. False NAB Account Records {ID_003455} / {L15/100/1}

499. This document is an email sent from Dr Wright to a collaborator, Jimmy Nguyen, on 10 June 2019. There is no reason to doubt the email was sent on that date. The allegation of forgery relates to the screenshots presented by Dr Wright in the email. The screenshots are of banking records from his personal bank account. The text of the email explains the relationship of the information in those screenshots to his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

500. The email and attached screenshots present as showing Dr Wright’s purchase, using his Visa Credit card, of a vistomail email address on 30 August 2008. Although this is not explicitly stated, the clear implication is that the vistomail address in question is that which was used by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

(a) COPA’s Reasons for Alleging Forgery

501. The banking record in the email has been admitted by Dr Wright to be a false document.

502. Dr Wright did not admit that record to be false until after service of the Madden Report.

503. The filenames of the images embedded within the email indicate that the email was edited through an unusual process by which 6 images were embedded into the email, and the email was saved as a draft. However all but two of these images were deleted before sending. [PM17 [14-15]].

504. The missing images from the email editing process have not themselves been disclosed. [PM17 [16]].

505. The content of the screenshots indicates that they were taken in 2018 or afterwards. [PM17 [18-28]].

506. Native format exports of the documents would have been available to Dr Wright but were not provided in disclosure. [PM17 [11]].

507. Taking into account the transactions shown in the document, it would not have been possible to take authentic screenshots using the software indicated in the screenshots themselves. By the time that software was released (2018), the transactions shown were from a date which was 10 years or more in the past. The bank in question stores records for online access for no more than 2 years. [PM17 [29-35]].

508. The content of web page screenshots is freely manipulable in Google Chrome, being the software shown as being used in the screenshots. [PM17 [36-40]].

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

509. The false screenshots in the document are taken from Dr Wright’s own personal bank account.

510. The false screenshots in the document include a screenshot of the account holder details specifically identifying Dr Wright as the account holder.

511. Dr Wright must have known that the screenshots in question were false when he sent the email (as indeed he now admits he did).

512. Dr Wright did not admit the documents to be false until after service of the Madden Report.

513. Dr Wright is and at all material times has been in possession of documents that prove this document to be false (in the form of authentic, contemporaneous bank statements for the same account in question, but which do not bear the transaction information on which he relies).

514. Dr Wright did not disclose the authentic bank statements in accordance with his duties of disclosure. Instead, Dr Wright disclosed the false screenshots.

515. Dr Wright has publicly asserted (notably in his “Evidence and Law Article”) that he was in control of records of the kind shown in this document, which he purported to be decisively probative by way of evidence of his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Such public assertions were made at a time contemporaneous to the date of this document being created.

516. Dr Wright’s attempts to explain the records as false documents supplied to him by an unknown person over Reddit, and to explain his email as intended to check the falsity of the documents, are highly implausible. Dr Wright’s attempted explanations rely on information being purportedly passed to him by his previous legal representative who has died, and are unsupported by disclosure.

517. 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 proving his purchase of a domain associated with Satoshi), contrary to fact.

518. The document is sent from Dr Wright to a collaborator of Dr Wright’s and contains text written by Dr Wright apparently intended to persuade the recipient that the information is supportive of his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

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

519. After receiving the first Madden report, Dr Wright through his solicitors admitted that these NAB records were fake (see letter of 27 September 2023 {M/2/205}). Then, in his third statement in the BTC Core proceedings (served on 16 October 2023) {E1/4/1}, he provided his explanation. He claimed that (a) a pseudonymous Reddit user sent the records by direct message to Amanda McGovern, a now-deceased lawyer in the firm Rivero Mestre (his lawyers in the Kleiman proceedings); (b) on 9 or 10 June 2019, Ms McGovern forwarded the records to Dr Wright; (c) Dr Wright did not believe that the records were genuine, so he immediately forwarded them on to Jimmy Nguyen to check. He said that he had not used his NAB credit card for the purchase of the Bitcoin domain but had used “other payment methods”.

520. In his oral evidence, Dr Wright reiterated that account: {Day2/29:14} to {Day2/43:4}. He also added the detail that the card number identified in the email and the records was the number for a debit card (not a credit card) and that that card had been cancelled in 2005 {Day2/31:2}. He said that this supposed feature had led him to suspect the records (“this was part of why I was pointing out the problem”).

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

521.1. The natural reading of this email from 10 June 2019 attaching the screenshots of the NAB records was that these were records of genuine purchases with a number which was (as the email said) “my old credit card” relating to a Vistomail account. The text of the email is not consistent with Dr Wright’s account that he was asking Mr Nguyen to check records he believed to be fake.

521.2. The fact that Dr Wright was putting forward these as real records of purchase of the Bitcoin.org domain and the Satoshi Vistomail account is further reinforced by (i) the fact that he issued a blog “Evidence and Law” in April 2019 saying that he had used “my credit card” to purchase the Vistomail account and the Bitcoin.org domain {L14/451/3-4} and would deploy currently valid records in evidence in court to prove this; and (ii) the fact that he had given an interview in April 2019 saying that he had and would deploy a credit card statement showing that he had purchased the Bitcoin.org domain and the Satoshi email account {O4/25/34}, {O4/25/36}. He acknowledged the blog post and interview, and their plain meaning, in his oral evidence: {Day2/26:11} to {Day2/29:13}.

521.3. The statements in his blog post and interview would have made no sense if, as Dr Wright now says, (i) he had not paid for the domain and email account with a credit card at all; (ii) he did not have credit card records to prove it.

521.4. On Dr Wright’s account now, the sequence of events was that (i) he told the world in April 2019 that he could prove his purchase of the domain and email account with credit card records; (ii) he happened not to have such records; and (iii) the mysterious Reddit user, with (presumably) no basis for knowing that Dr Wright had no such records, happened two months later to create some and seek to plant them on him. This is wholly implausible.

521.5. Furthermore, even if this Reddit user did exist, how did they know all of Dr Wright’s financial details, where he banks, what his credit card numbers were etc. It would mean all of this information was stolen or known to them.

521.6. Dr Wright’s account that he immediately realised that these records were fake but sent them to Mr Nguyen to check their validity is also implausible. Rivero Mestre were his lawyers in the Kleiman proceedings. There is no suggestion that Mr Nguyen had any special expertise in Australian banking records or in forensic document examination.

521.7. The account Dr Wright gave in oral evidence for why he suspected the records (i.e. that the card number was for a debit card, not a credit card, and that it had been cancelled in 2005) was another lie, as was quickly established. Documents in Dr Wright’s disclosure include (i) NAB statements relating this card number to an NAB Low Rate Visa credit card with a credit limit which was still in use in 2008 (e.g. {L7/390/1}); and (ii) receipts for payments actually made with this credit card after 2005, including for instance in May 2009 (e.g. {L5/70/38} – receipt describing a payment to Lee Rowans Gardens with this “NAB visa credit card”). Dr Wright’s attempts in cross-examination to make his previous evidence fit these records were hopeless: {Day2/79:15} to {Day2/82:12}.

521.8. It is implausible that Dr Wright became aware of these fake documents being planted on him in June 2019, troubled to check that they were fake, but later disclosed them in these proceedings without it any mention that they were false documents planted on him.

521.9. Dr Wright sought to answer the charge that he had first come up with the story involving Ms McGovern after Mr Madden had debunked these records by saying that it was mentioned in court in the Kleiman litigation. When he was pressed to confirm this, and plainly realising that transcripts could be checked, he suggested that it may have been mentioned in closed session. When he was pressed again and it was pointed out that it may be possible to check even closed session transcripts, he retreated, saying only that he had “told my various solicitors”, including individuals other than Ms McGovern. When I pressed Dr Wright further to identify these other persons, he spoke of a “Jonny”, who he claimed was a Sikh. He said he would revert with Jonny’s last name, but did not do so. See: {Day2/34:7} to {Day2/35:12}.

(d) Conclusion

522. In addition to COPA’s submissions as set out above in this section, I refer also to [144]- [147] in the main Judgment, all of which demonstrate the absurdity of Dr Wright’s attempted contortions to explain away this document. These records were plainly forged by Dr Wright in order to substantiate his claim to have purchased the vistomail address in 2008. His attempts to blame the forgery on others are absurd.