Boies Schiller Flexner is representing the estate of a deceased IT security expert in a $10.2 billion lawsuit accusing Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright, who claims to be the elusive figure who invented bitcoin, of stealing intellectual property and bitcoin from the estate.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Miami on behalf of the estate of David Kleiman, a paralyzed information technology security expert who died under mysterious circumstances in 2013, may incidentally establish whether Wright is, in fact, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, said to be the inventor of bitcoin.

Wright is accused in the suit of stealing intellectual property and swindling bitcoin from the estate. Wright and Kleiman, who met in 2003, worked together on bitcoin and mined the first 50 bitcoins in early 2009, according to the complaint. In 2011, they founded a bitcoin mining and software development company called W&K Info Defense Research in Florida. The estate claims Kleiman was entitled to more than 1.1 million in bitcoin valued at more than $10.2 billion when the suit was filed, and is asking for judgment in that amount plus interest and court costs and damages.

The Miami lawsuit was filed by Kleiman's brother, Ira Kleiman, of Palm Beach, Florida, on behalf of the estate. In the complaint, Ira claims that Wright, who first claimed to be bitcoin's creator under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto in 2016, used forged signatures on legal documents to cheat Kleiman's estate out of its fair share. Wright is 46 years old and resides in the United Kingdom, according to court documents.

Devin “Velvel” Freedman, a Boies Schiller counsel in Miami, represents the plaintiff with Kyle Roche, an associate in the firm's Armonk office.

“The client came to us primarily because of the firm's litigation expertise and my experience in handling international disputes,” Freedman said in an emailed statement. “But he was also impressed with the knowledge of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-related issues of lawyers like Kyle Roche, who is working on the case with me.”

Freedman's statement continued: “While we are primarily concerned with recovering the assets the complaint alleges Dr. Wright took from David Kleiman's estate, the case also raises interesting questions about the identity of Satoshi Nak[a]moto.”

Freedman focuses on complex litigation defense including cryptocurrency and blockchain lawsuits, international disputes and consumer class actions, and is an ordained rabbi, according to his official biography . He was a judicial intern for U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York.

Roche is a chemical engineering graduate of Purdue University with a J.D. from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and has published articles on cryptocurrency and the law.

“To continue to flourish, bitcoin does not have to become a more stable store of value than the U.S. dollar. It can climb the rungs of respectability by prevailing over less trustworthy currencies,” Roche wrote in a July 2017 op-ed at The Wall Street Journal with John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

Rivero Mestre attorneys Andrés Rivero, Jorge Mestre, Alan Rolnick and Daniel Sox in Miami represent Wright in the new case in Miami. Wright's team is expected to file a response to the complaint by April 16. The firm had not responded to a request for comment by deadline.

Trial lawyer Rivero was one of the lead lawyers in U.S. v. GDC, one of the longest trials in the history of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, according to his official law firm bio. He was formerly an attorney and litigation shareholder at Greenberg Traurig in Miami. Before that, he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami from 1989 to 1994.

Commercial litigator Mestre represented a Chevron Corp. attorney successfully in a suit that was part of the $100 billion, 18-year litigation over Chevron's alleged pollution in the Amazon, according to his firm bio.

The lawsuit is assigned to U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom of the Southern District of Florida.