What is Facebook’s current valuation? According to WSJ, it currently stands around $56 billion dollars. That means, if you had owned 50% of its shares, you would have been the owner of about $28 billion. A New York based entrepreneur, named Paul Ceglia, calculated the same and tried to defraud Facebook by claiming to have owed 50% shares of the social networking company. The result of his actions? He was arrested at his home in Wellsville, New York yesterday.
Ceglia claimed that in 2003, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg conceived the idea of Facebook from him. Ceglia produced a two-page forged contract which awarded him half of the stake at Facebook.
However, it was later found out that Mark Zuckerberg, then a university student, indeed signed a contract with Ceglia, but to do programming work for the latter. Zuckerberg was supposed to develop street-mapping software for Ceglia, according to facebook’s lawyer. Ceglia doctored the document later on to insert references of Facebook in the contract document.
Ceglia filed a lawsuit in 2010 claiming to have signed a contract with Zuckerberg for 84% stake of Facebook. In 2011, he modified the claim to have owed 50% stake of the social network.
The New York based entrepreneur has charged with mail fraud and wire fraud.
Thanks to: BBC, Computerworld
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