The Kleiman Case: US Court orders Craig Wright to pay $165,000 in Legal Fees

The estate of Dave Kleiman initiated the lawsuit against the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto Craig Wright in February 2018 claiming that Craig Wright has defrauded 1.1 million bitcoins worth $5 billion.

According to the Kleiman case, Craig Wright stole Kleiman’s share of Bitcoins that they both had mined together in April 2013 before Kleiman’s death. The case is still in progress but the Court has ordered Craig to pay $165,000 in legal fees according to a document.

Kleiman’s lawyers requested for $658,581 in legal fees

The legal fees that Craig Wright has been ordered to pay were incurred during the litigation of two motions. Initially, the lawyers of Kleiman requested for an amount of $658,581 in legal fees in which expenses and wages were also included. But the judge removed these additional fees after finding out that the rates were in excess charged by Kleiman’s lawyers.

According to the document:

It was not reasonable to have three lawyers involved to this extent to review a draft of a relatively straight-forward pleading.

After putting out these expenses, the judge presented a sizable bill and ordered the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto to pay $165,000 in legal fees.

The matter of the private keys of Satoshi’s 1 million bitcoins

However, the matter of the private keys of Satoshi’s one million bitcoin is still going on. According to the judge. Craig Wright claims to have more privileges about the private keys of Satoshi’s one billion bitcoin worth around $8 billion.

However, the judge has refused his privilege claims and denied to rely on the documents that Craig Wright provided to the court. The Judge said:

I decline to rely on this kind of document, which could easily have been generated by anyone with word processing software and a pen.