Faketoshi, The Early Years — Part 3
MyLegacyKit (Link to original medium.com post)
Gregor Sailer: Carson City VI/Vågårda, Sweden, from the series “The Potemkin Village”, 2016
Written by Arthur van Pelt, with assistance from CryptoDevil
ABOUT EDITS to this article: as more material might become available
after publication of this article, it will have edits and updates every now
and then. In that sense, this article can be considered a work in progress,
to become a reference piece for years to come.
Intro
We hope you truly enjoyed:
- “Faketoshi, The Early Years — Part 1”
- “Faketoshi, The Early Years — Part 2”
Let’s recap Part 2, which covers the whole of 2014, for a bit before we
continue with Part 3 which will cover the year 2015. This will also bring us to
the closure of this epic series. Spoiler alert, in 2015 Craig’s Bitcoin related
Potemkin Village will be completely demolished by the ATO, leaving Craig
desperately looking for a multi-million-dollar bailout, then fleeing Australia
and setting up camp in London after having convinced a credulous billionaire
to believe in his discredited and extraordinarily-tall tales of billion-dollar
Bitcoin stashes and blue-chip IP supposedly made all-the-more valuable by
his up-till-today unproven claim to be ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.
February 2014
Craig is feeling the pressure from the ATO investigators, who are clearly not
swallowing his contrived story of hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of
Bitcoin-based business transactions he has based multiple multi-million-
dollar cash rebate claims on, Bitcoin he can provide no evidence for ever
having owned in the first place, leading him to commit to the next step of his
desperate plan. Some ten months after the death of his friend he emails
Dave Kleiman’s family in the US and tells them that he and David were, “two
of the three key people behind Bitcoin”.
That is how he, with support of Dave’s family, intends to explain away to the
ATO how he, Craig Wright, could have hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of BTC — by staking claim to the famed ‘Satoshi Stash’!
As for Dave’s family, he just strings them along for several years with
repeated talk of potential billions in wealth they could be in line for,
persistently changing the narrative as he progresses it, conjuring up
supposed ‘offshore trusts’ and, ultimately, offering them shares in his
companies in return for them signing away their rights to it all, so as to avoid
the one thing he cannot actually do, send any of the Bitcoin anywhere.
Because to do that, one would actually have to have the private keys and,
until proven otherwise, the only person who would have those keys is the
real ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.
Back to 2014. Craig went through a year of further ATO scrutiny, and at least
four hearings and meetings with the ATO would be scheduled, where we
find Craig making the most outrageous claims about his Bitcoin holdings,
hinting to offshore trusts all over the globe, and finally setting one up in
October 2014: the empty shelf company Tulip Trading Ltd will become, with
numerous backdated forgeries, one of the outlets forming the infamous Tulip
Trust.
As we have evidenced in the previous two articles, there have been several
of Craig Wright’s frauds, running into the 100s of millions of dollars in false
bookkeeping, exposed so far:
The multitude of contradictory claims of Bitcoin spends where he
cannot show ever having controlled the Bitcoin addresses when asked
to by the ATO
The David Rees cosplay — His claims of large Bitcoin payments by
supposedly posting private keys of wallet addresses to the elderly and
dementia-suffering Professor David Rees, for ‘consulting’; something
the Professor’s family rejected as a complete fabrication
The Deborah Kobza cosplay — The fraudulent claims of massive multi-
millions-dollar business transactions he supposedly conducted for
GICSR, a wholly outrageous assertion for a small non-profit
organisation which never occurred, according to the court deposition of
its own founder, Deborah Kobza
The UK companies fraud — His purchasing of ‘readymade’ off-the-
shelf companies from a UK formation agent, for which he dishonestly
created backdated contracts and legal filings dated years prior to when
he had actually bought them, in an attempt to deceive the ATO
investigators
A Seychelles ‘readymade’ company ‘Tulip Trading Ltd’ he bought which,
again, he tried faking backdated trust documents for
The Mark Ferrier/MJF Mining fraud — A multi-million-dollar ‘deal’ with a
fugitive conman for, industrial mining software, gold ore and banking
software, for which the ‘proof’ he supplied to the ATO was exposed by
them as being faked, with email chains from domains which didn’t exist
at the date of the email, to ‘support’ services for the banking software
from a domain purchased on his own credit card and fake software
licenses
The NSW Supreme Court fraud — His false representations to the NSW
Supreme Court, where in his attempt to ‘astroturf’ value to his
fraudulent tax rebates, he executed a pantomime ‘recovery’ of multi-
million-dollars-worth of bitcoin and IP from the dormant US company
Dave Kleiman had set up. Falsely claiming that the US DoD and DHS
had used software he’d developed, as well as staking claim to non-
existent bitcoin he’d loaned it
… and so we continue with Faketoshi, The Early Years — Part 3.
Disclaimer: The reader will see, at times, the $ symbol being used. Since
Craig Wright lived in Australia in the timeframe of these articles, the $
symbol used in numbers related to Craig will always refer to the Australian
dollar (AUD), except where indicated otherwise.
Spring/Summer 2015: Bitcoin Belle introduces Craig Wright in the Bitcoin
community.
Roughly late first, or in the second quarter of 2015, Craig starts infiltrating in
the Bitcoin community. On Twitter, but also in real life. Crucial in this point of
time is Bitcoin Belle (real name: Michele Seven). Michele was interviewed by
Hackernoon (writer: OrphanBlocks) in April 2018, and we learned quite a few
interesting tidbits about Craig Wright’s wheelings and dealings in 2015.
Michele Seven, Twitter profile image 2014
The following quotes are all taken from the Hackernoon article, intertwined
with a few notes and comments from the undersigned between […].
“It’s no stretch to say that Craig Wright is a bonafide “personality” in the
blockchain space regardless of whether he actually is Satoshi… and it’s quite
interesting to explore how he actually got there.
[Note: It is true that, as of writing the Hackernoon article in April 2018, Craig
Wright had indeed become a notorious ‘personality’ in the blockchain space.
After the December 2015 Wired/Gizmodo turmoil, and the May 2016 signing
sessions debacle, labelling him as ‘bonafide’ is a bit of a stretch though, of
course.]
The answer of course is through Bitcoin Belle.
Here is a very quick rundown (for those of you that did not have the pleasure
of being around in 2015) of the “version of events” that most people seem to
believe:
Craig contacts Bitcoin Belle in early 2015. Convinces her that he is
Satoshi. The two begin a relationship of sorts. [Note: The two begin a
relationship seemingly predicated on Craig convincing Michelle of his
wealth, power, high-level contacts, hacking abilities, whatever it took to
reel her in on the idea he could potentially ‘fix’ a family problem of hers
which, in her desperation to believe he could be some sort of ‘deus ex
machina’ in the face of her distressing situation, she fell for, hook, line
and sinker.]
Source: https://twitter.com/satoshi_n_/status/855837033956343814
Bitcoin Belle introduces Craig to a bunch of other influencers and uses
her own credibility in the space to get him onto panels and conferences.
People like John Matonis, Roger Ver and Gavin Andresen [Note: it is
uncertain if Gavin Andresen is already aware of Craig Wright at this
point in time: Summer 2015] believe Craig is Satoshi and risk their
reputations to support him.
Craig drops Bitcoin Belle once he has enough contacts and
introductions. The two stop speaking until Bitcoin Belle arranges a panel
event later that year [We will come back to this panel in greater detail
later] with a host of big names including Nick Szabo, who until that
point had not made a public appearance in forever.
Craig takes the bait, accepts a place on the panel but does not use the
conference to announce himself as Satoshi. Bitcoin Belle does not press
further with her questions (perhaps still believing he might be Satoshi)
and Nick Szabo only has a limited tussle with Craig much to Bitcoin
Belle’s chagrin.
Craig Wright once he has seduced enough of the community eventually
announces himself as Satoshi … but as mentioned earlier, the proof he
provides is found to be not sufficient [Note: the supposed proof is
quickly exposed by multiple Bitcoin and cryptography experts as being
nothing but a pubkey copy of an old, blockchain-viewable, Satoshi-
transaction] and as a result the community turns on him and Bitcoin
Belle for facilitating his introduction.
She made introductions for Craig to Jon Matonis and Roger Ver. The former
was unable to find the US$2 million that Craig needed but until recently
performed the role of Vice President at nChain (Craig’s company).
Roger however was more than happy to jump at the opportunity of helping
“Satoshi” as long as Craig was able to provide some form of crypto-
graphical proof. Craig provided the same proof that was refuted by the
community a few months later, but Roger was easily duped at this point.”
Taken from Hackernoon “Bitcoin Belle’s CCme: The woman who brought you
Craig ‘Satoshi’ Wright strikes again…”
Michele Seven, Twitter profile image 2015
Now read that last paragraph again… Is it remotely possible that Roger Ver
loaned, or gave, Craig Wright US$2,000,000 for a fake signing in 2015? On
the other hand, when Roger and Craig nuked their relationship in November
2018, Craig send Roger an email, implying there was never proof provided.
Or, in the alternative, Roger had found out the signing was… fake?
Again we see Craig Wright here in full petulant-child angry-tantrum mode,
as usual whenever his ‘reality’ is being challenged. For nearly twenty years
of documented history, from DeMorgan to his ‘Satoshi’ cosplay, you can see
examples of how he ropes in gullible investors by masquerading as a world-
class expert in whichever field his con is related to, before turning on them
when the charade is exposed and he is held to account. So at all times, this
is again a perfect example how Craig is attempting to defraud governments
and gullible, rich investors.
March 26, 2015: The SGI letter forgery.
Remember October 2013, when Craig filed the “Sukuriputo Okane”
supercomputer project for R&D tax rebates? In March 2015, the ATO is
starting to inquire into this ‘multi-million-dollar project’, so Craig quickly
forges a fake SGI letter and puts it on the CloudCroft website — another
Potemkin-village facade, of course.
If you’ve read the previous articles in the series, when it comes to just how
inept Craig is at these fakes and forgeries, you surely know what is coming
next…
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229045943/http://cdn1.spotidoc.com/store/data/001035994_1-
b8959504f48a66c79da40c4acb98b77c.png
March/April 2015: The “Sukuriputo Okane” project starts falling apart.
The ATO, having visited the premises of Craig Wright as part of their in-
depth and (still-to-this-day!) ongoing investigation into Craig Wright and his
supposed multi-million-dollar business activities find… drum roll please… no
evidence that this supercomputer exists at all.
And as a result, the ever-suitable Faketoshi mantra “[Craig Wright] had not
provided any evidence” can be found two handfuls of times, in different
shapes and forms, in the relevant section of one of the ATO reports. He
won’t be holding back on the wildly fabricated R&D claims just yet, though,
because at this time Craig has only had the visit, but not the report of their
findings yet, findings which are painfully detailed:
Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/547/7/kleiman-v-wright/
May 2015: Craig adjusts the June 2014 “Bitcoin” blog forgery.
In a really-weak attempt to pretend like he wants to cover-up his since-
proven-to-be-a-backdated-fake January 10, 2009 Bitcoin ‘launch’ post,
Craig goes back and deletes that fake, to replace it with another, albeit,
rather than remove reference to Bitcoin he leaves it there knowing that
credulous investigators can see his previous ‘I am implying that I am Satoshi’
version viewable on the Wayback Machine.