One of the most enduring mysteries of modern times has produced another enthralling twist. Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoins pseudonymous and enigmatic creator, has not been seen online in more than eight years. Evidence has now surfaced that points to a new Satoshi candidate, whose known life has a number of parallels with that of Bitcoins inventor. His name is Paul Le Roux and, if proven to be Satoshi, there is a good reason why his 1 millionBTChasnt moved the Rhodesian has been in jail since 2012.

The Kleiman v. Wrightlawsuitunfolding in the Florida courts has been filled with misdirection, red herrings, mistruths, forgeries, and bizarre theories, often floated by the defendant Craig Wright.Document 187, Dr. Craig Wrights Motion For Protective Order, was recently filed with heavy redaction because Wright supposedly has a well-founded fear that these criminals and their associates would seek retribution if they learned of his involvement in their apprehension and incarceration.

Someone forgot to redact one of the corresponding footnotes, however, enabling a sharp-eyed sleuth to identify the master criminal in question: Paul Le Roux. The 46-year-old cartel boss is a character as flamboyant as Wright himself, but cut from a very different cloth. Readers may already be familiar with Le Rouxs life story, which surfaced in a seven-part series onAtavistand subsequent book titled The Mastermind. As the blurb summarizes:

He was a brilliant programmer and a vicious cartel boss, who became a prized U.S. government asset.

It has now been suggested that Paul Le Roux may be Satoshi Nakamoto and that Craig Wright is in possession of encrypted hard drives containing Le Rouxs multi-billion-dollar stash of bitcoins. Its a crazy theory, and yet, on closer inspection, there is a prima facie case for Bitcoins mastermind being criminal mastermind Le Roux.

As his Wikipedia page the very same page which escaped redaction in the Kleiman v. Wright case notes, Paul Calder Le Roux is a former programmer, former criminal cartel boss and informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He created E4M, an open-source free Windows disk encryption software program, in 1999, and is a suspected creator of the open-source TrueCrypt, which is based on E4Ms code.

Then it drops a bomb: Le Roux is currently in US custody for ordering the assassinations of six people.

If any screenwriters mulling a Satoshi Nakamoto movie are searching for inspiration, they just got a huge shot of it. With a career thats included logging, precious metals mining, gold smuggling, land deals, drug shipments, arms trafficking and money laundering, Le Roux is a one-man movie waiting to happen and thats before the Bitcoin connection is thrown into the mix. In one of the many passports Le Roux owned, he goes by the Satoshi-like name of Solotshi and thats just the beginning of the curious coincidences.

A Daily Mailarticlewhich also slipped through the redactors net, leaving a trace of the URL visible in document 187 cited at the outset, calls Le Roux a real-life Bond villain behind a cocaine and gun empire spanning four continents whos now turned super-snitch and quotes U.S. agents as calling him a very bad guy.

As the anon whopostedon 4chans /biz/ messageboard on May 12, after spotting Le Rouxs name in the Wright case postulated, Bitcoin was a project of a evil genius Paul Solotshi Calder Le Roux. He intended it simply for the purpose of money laundering Unfortunately, soon after he went quiet with the Satoshi identity, he was captured by law enforcement, and hes going to spend the rest of his life rotting in jail cell.

Even if Le Roux did create Bitcoin, it does not follow that money laundering was his goal: it would likelier have been an extension of his obsession with cryptography, which can be traced back to the 90s. Before Paul Le Roux broke bad, he was by all accounts a brilliant programmer and privacy ideologue. In 1997, he began work on E4M (Encryption for the Masses), software which is capable of encrypting entire disks, and optionally of plausible deniability (denying the existence of an encrypted volume), Wikipediaexplains. It continues:

In the Politics section of the E4M website [archive], Le Roux published a kind of manifesto stating that governments are increasingly relying on electronic data gathering. Citing projects such as Echelon, linked to the five nation states which would become known as the Five Eyes more than a decade later, he stated that encryption is the only way to preserve civil liberties.

The E4M manifesto finishes: Strong Encryption is the mechanism with which to combat these intrusions, preserve your rights, and guarantee your freedoms into the information age and beyond Paul Le Roux, Author, Encryption for the Masses.

For those intent on comparing Satoshi and Le Rouxs personas for similarities, there are several attributes and actions that align plus a few that dont. Given that both entities were adept at assuming false personas and concealing their natural language and idiosyncrasies, identification is no easy task. Heres whats known about the pair that points to them being the same person:

And then theresthispost from 2002, seven years before Bitcoin was released:

It doesnt read like Satoshis voice, but it does read an awfully lot like someones early idea of Bitcoin. The IP address of the author hassupposedlybeen traced to the Netherlands a country where Le Roux once lived.

For all of the surface evidence that suggests Le Roux could have been Satoshi, not all of the points align. In 2009, for example, when Satoshi was diligently refining Bitcoin, Le Roux was already dabbling in drug smuggling and gun running. Would it have been possible to maintain such a double life, one chaotic and the other scholarly?

In an IRC chat dating from around the time of the Bitcoin Cash ABC/SV split, user CSW (Craig Wright) connects Bitcointalk and r/Bitcoin moderator Theymos to Paul Le Roux, claiming that the pair used to be partners before Le Roux was arrested. He also asserts that Theymos is still in the pharma spam business, which dovetails with Le Rouxs illegal pharmaceutical business.

There is a caveat to all of this, of course: Craig Wright is a habitual liar, whose every utterance must be fact-checked. Given that Le Rouxs name has been linked with Satoshi sincelate 2018, it is possible that Wright latched onto it, and wove it into the fanfic hes been crafting for the Kleiman case. As such, any evidence from the mouth of the man known as Faketoshi should be treated with caution. Few, aside from Calvin Ayre, believe that Craig Wright created Bitcoin, but many believe that by luck or design he could have been lurking in the background from near the start.

Could this involvement have been due to Wright serving as an informant on Le Roux, himself now an informant following his arrest in September 2012? It sounds fanciful, but its certainly an intriguing notion. As one anontheorized, Craig Wright was an employee of Le Roux, who was vaguely aware of the bitcoin project. Craig was an informant who helped bring down Le Roux, and after his arrest, Craig managed (via long time friend and partner in crime, Dave Kleiman) to get his hands on the wallets that hold a million bitcoins, but unfortunately for Craig, all of Solotshis coins are locked away in secure TrueCrypt volumes (TrueCrypt being another software that Le Roux developed). He has been trying for years to crack them but with no success.

Another of Craigs long time friends, Calvin Ayre, has set up warehouses of computers to try to crack Solotshis password and unlock the vast fortunes; his mining activity is simply a front to make these massive datacenters look legitimate. Craig is being set up as the real satoshi so that when the coins are finally unlocked, they can legitimately sell them off.

If the Rhodesian crime boss is Satoshi Nakamoto, it means that the two biggest contributors to Bitcoins early success, Paul Le Roux and Ross Ulbricht, are both in the custody of U.S. authorities. There they will likely see out the rest of their lives, while the rest of the world profits from the innovations of these flawed geniuses. Interestingly, in little more than 24 hours,Gotsatoshi.compromises to reveal the identity of Bitcoins creator. While the cryptosphere will not be holding its breath in anticipation, the countdown adds further intrigue to the most enduring mystery of the digital age.

What are your thoughts on the Paul Le Roux and Satoshi connection? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Satoshi Nakamoto Could Be Rhodesia Born Criminal ...