- Lynn Wright has dropped her lawsuit concerning ownership of W&K Info Defense LLC, settling the fate of a $149 million judgment
- The judgment was meted out to her ex-husband, Satoshi pretender Craig Wright, in 2021
- Wright now has no claim on the money he still has not paid out
The fate of a $149 million court judgment dating back to 2021 has been settled after Lynn Wright, the ex-wife of Satoshi faker Craig Wright, dropped a long-running lawsuit concerning the ownership of the company at the heart of the case. Lynn filed the suit against Ira Kleiman in 2020, accusing him of illegally representing W&K Info Defense LLC in the case against Craig Wright, alleging that she was a minority owner. However, almost three years after W&K was awarded $143 million by a Florida jury, Lynn has dropped the case, which raises questions over its legitimacy.
Wright ‘Stole’ Intellectual Property From W&K
The case dates back to February 2018 when Kleiman sued Craig Wright for half a million bitcoins and billions of dollars in intellectual property (IP) that he said Wright had stolen from W&K. Wright and Ira Kleiman’s brother, David, founded W&K in 2011, but Ira alleged that when David died in 2013, Wright defrauded the Supreme Court of New South Wales into handing over AU$57 million worth of IP from W&K, taking with him half the bitcoins the pair supposedly mined together, which supposedly totalled 1.1 million.
Ira, in his position as heir to David’s estate, sued Wright demanding half the IP and half the bitcoin stash, with a jury ruling in December 2021 that Wright was guilty of conversion to the tune of $100 million over the IP. The IP, however, was awarded to W&K rather than Ira, with the jury finding that David and Wright had not mined the bitcoins in a partnership. Months later, $43 million was added in pre-judgment interest, with post-judgment interest taking the total to $149 million today.
However, in an attempt to get the charges dismissed in the lead-up to the trial, Wright had convinced his ex-wife Lynn to file a suit against Ira, claiming that, through a convoluted mechanism of trusts and share transfers, she was a minority shareholder of W&K and hadn’t voted Ira Kleiman in as representative. If she were victorious, that would have meant that Ira was not in a position to represent W&K and the lawsuit couldn’t go ahead.
Wight’s Hopes Dashed
The case was halted until the conclusion of the Kleiman v Wright trial, removing this possibility but opening up another: if she won, Craig Wright would end up owing the money to her, not Ira Kleiman. Wright revelled in this at the time, telling his supporters, “No appeal. I will not take away from my Ex Wife who has been defrauded of control of W&K by Kleiman. Ira has defrauded her and others. She will go for punitive now.”
The case was supposed to have picked up in 2022, but, following repeated cancellations of hearings and changes in counsel, Lynn last week voluntarily dismissed the case, eviscerating at a stroke four years worth of claims from Craig Wright that Lynn Wright had anything to do with W&K.
The upshot is that ownership of W&K still rests with David Kleiman’s estate, whose executor and sole heir is Ira Kleiman. This means that, if Craig Wright were to ever pay up (which to date he has not done), it would mean that Ira Kleiman would be entitled to the lot, minus his undoubtedly exorbitant legal fees.
Wright, meanwhile, is still on the world tour on which he embarked following his defeat to the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance in March, which has left him facing possible criminal charges.
