Craig Wright Denies Forging Emails in COPA Trial, Accuses Critics of Spoofing

According to CoinDesk, Craig Wright denied forging emails between him and his former lawyers on Friday during his last cross-examination in the COPA trial. The trial will resume on March 12 for closing statements. Wright accused critics of bugging his home and spoofing an email he’s been accused of doctoring during a Friday cross-examination in the U.K. trial probing his claims of having invented Bitcoin. Spoofing involves changing the metadata of an email to make it look like it was sent from a different address. When asked by presiding Judge James Mellor if he could specify who did the spoofing, Wright said, “Unfortunately not. I suspect a number of people, My Lord.” The Australian computer scientist has long maintained he’s Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous author of Bitcoin’s foundational document known as the whitepaper. A group of industry participants called the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and several Bitcoin developers filed suit against Wright, alleging he’d committed forgeries of an “industrial scale” in trying to prove he’s Satoshi. On Friday, Wright vehemently denied accusations made by COPA of backdating the email in question to support a statement he’d made in court the previous week concerning his former legal representatives at Ontier. Wright instead blamed the timestamp and other discrepancies on email spoofing, spam folders, domain migrations, surveillance and hacking. After Wright, COPA’s expert witness Patrick Madden returned to the stand to defend his new analysis of the Ontier emails. Wright’s counsel sought to establish spoofing was an easy thing to do. When asked by Wright’s lawyer Craig Orr if the email could have been spoofed, Madden said he didn’t think it was. “I do not think it’s practical to consider that,” Madden said. Friday was the last day for discussing evidence. The trial will resume on March 12 for closing statements from both sides.