Indeed, in May 2020, an anonymous blogger PaintedFrog posted an analysis of Wright’s doctoral thesis titled ‘The Quantification of Information Systems Risk: A Look at Quantitative Responses to Information Security Issues’, in which the blogger made side-by-side comparisons with the content Wright purportedly plagiarized.

Examples of plagiarism

According to PaintedFrog, the plagiarized content included published papers, books, webpages, and slideshow presentations, explaining that: The blogger also added that, in most of the cases, Wright “did not even bother to change the sentence order.” Further listing other instances of Wright’s plagiarism, the blogger explained that many parts were stolen “verbatim or near-verbatim,” as well as lacked citation and credit, despite Wright signing and including the Certificate of Authorship in the thesis’ opening pages. In addition, PaintedFrog stated that: The blogger also explained that “in other cases, Wright copied clear errors that were already present in the source material and did not correct them.” Earlier, the same blogger accused Wright of also plagiarizing his 2008 LLM dissertation in International Commercial Law from Northumbria University, titled ‘The Impact of Internet Intermediary Liability’, without even mentioning the original author in some cases.

Wright’s other troubles

Meanwhile, a London court deliberating on a case in which Wright accused a cryptocurrency podcaster and blogger Peter McCormack of libel over stating that Wright was not Satoshi dismissed Wright’s first witness statement as “straightforwardly false in almost every material aspect.” In mid-March, Finbold reported that Wright was made to pay $43 million in damages, as a federal court convicted him of illegally seizing intellectual property belonging to a joint venture he co-founded. Back in June 2021, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) Vitalik Buterin also accused Wright of pretending to be the pseudonymous creator of the flagship cryptocurrency, likening him to the former United States President Donald Trump and challenging his lawyers to sue him. Featured image via Kitco News YouTube