Paul Ceglia vs. Mark Zuckerberg
Ceglia met future Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg in 2003, when Ceglia posted a
Craigslist advertisement seeking help with his website StreetFax. On June 30, 2010, Ceglia filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, claiming 84% ownership of Facebook and seeking monetary damages. According to Ceglia, he and Zuckerberg (then an undergraduate at
Harvard) entered an agreement on April 28, 2003, with a fee of $1,000 which entitled Ceglia to 50 percent of the website's revenue, as well as an additional 1 percent interest in the business per day after January 1, 2004 (if Zuckerberg was tardy in deploying the site), until the website was completed. The purported contract obligated Ceglia to pay Zuckerberg $1,000 for StreetFax and $1,000 for another project called PageBook. The contract also mentioned an expanded project called The Face Book to be completed by January 2004, charging an additional 1% interest in the business owed to Ceglia for each day the website is delayed from that date. Ceglia proffered a $1,000 receipt from his checkbook, dated six months after the contract, as evidence that he paid Zuckerberg for his work. Zuckerberg admitted to having worked with Ceglia on StreetFax.com, but claimed that Facebook was an entirely separate idea that had no relation to Ceglia. Ceglia and his lawyers have claimed that Facebook planted a fake document on his computer to incriminate him. The evidence presented by Ceglia was determined to be fabricated.
Legal counsel in Facebook case In court, Ceglia was represented by Paul Argentieri (his longtime counsel); Jeffrey Lake, a San Diego attorney, represented him on an interim basis after the law firms of Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman, Connors & Vilardo, and
DLA Piper all fired their client and left the case. Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman withdrew as counsel in early 2011, when their own analysis concluded that the contract Ceglia was using as evidence had been forged. On June 29, 2011, DLA Piper withdrew from the case, and Ceglia retained Jeffrey Lake. On October 18, 2011, Lake also withdrew from the case. Lake did not give a reason for his withdrawal. In October 2014, Facebook filed a lawsuit in
New York Supreme Court against DLA Piper, Milberg LLP and Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman for
malicious prosecution, claiming that these firms should have known that Ceglia's case was based on forged documents. The case was dismissed in December 2015. In March 2015, authorities discovered that Ceglia had removed his GPS tracking device and issued a warrant for his arrest. Law enforcement officials expressed concern that Ceglia was out of the country. Ceglia's mother, father, and brother lost the $250,000 they put up for Ceglia's bond. Though Ecuador's National Court of Justice ordered him returned to the U.S. to face the criminal charges, President
Lenin Moreno reversed the extradition order and Ceglia was freed from Ecuadorian custody in June 2019. Moreno concluded that Ceglia's third son—who was born in Ecuador in April 2018—was subject to court-ordered child support, thus prohibiting Ceglia from leaving the country in the "best interest" of the child. As of 2021, Ceglia remains in Ecuador and is expected to seek asylum and citizenship there. ==Prior Criminal Record==