Does this convicted felon own 50% of Facebook?

When Paul Ceglia sued Facebook in July 2010, he claimed to own up to 84% of Facebook. Facebook refuted the claim, obviously, because no schmuck is going to take Facebook away from the paws of Zuck (see what I did there?). The lawsuit was quickly forgotten because there really wasn’t any concrete evidence to back up Ceglia’s claim. The fact that Ceglia is also a convicted felon charged with committing grand larceny (fraud for you layfolk) via his wood-pellet company didn’t really help his case, and neither did the seven year period he waited before filing it. But now Ceglia is striking again, this time beefing up his legal team with a big-shot law firm known for dealing with high-profile tech company cases. He also provides new evidence including a supposed signed contract and supposed email exchanges between himself and Mark Zuckerberg in which they agreed that Ceglia was entitled to 50% ownership of “the face book” after providing the startup funds. Ceglia claims that Zuck had responded to his Craigslist ad for contract work on Ceglia’s project StreetFax, which is when Zuckerberg mentioned the Facebook idea to him. Ceglia and Zuck signed a contract to encompass both StreetFax and “the face book,” promising Ceglia half a stake in Zuck’s project. Facebook says that the StreetFax portion is accurate, but the Facebook parts were fabricated by Ceglia, which certainly is plausible considering Ceglia’s history in deception. However, a big law firm like DLA Piper surely wouldn’t commit to pursuing Ceglia’s case if they had reason to believe that the exchanges were fabricated, right? It’s still too early to say, but Ceglia’s case just got a whole lot heavier with this new twist.

Source: Business Insider