{"id":46349,"date":"2016-08-16T17:30:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T21:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=46349"},"modified":"2016-08-16T17:31:04","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T21:31:04","slug":"did-facebooks-zuckerberg-fail-to-compensate-an-original-investor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=46349","title":{"rendered":"Did Facebook’s Zuckerberg fail to compensate an original investor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook Fugitive \u2018Alive and Well and Living on the Air\u2019<\/span><\/h1>\n

Bob Van Voris
\nBloomberg Technology<\/p>\n

\"760x-1\"<\/a>

Paul Ceglia, exits federal court in New York on Nov. 28, 2012. Photographer: Peter Foley\/Bloomberg<\/p><\/div>\n

The story sounded crazy from the start: a guy from upstate New York claimed Mark Zuckerberg owed him half of Facebook Inc., and he had the papers to prove it.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s gotten even crazier.<\/p>\n

More than a year after the man, Paul Ceglia, cut off an electronic ankle bracelet and fled federal charges that he faked documents to bolster his lawsuit against Zuckerberg, Ceglia says someone — he didn\u2019t say who — was planning to have him killed.<\/p>\n

In e-mails to Bloomberg that reference cult television favorites and hint at government conspiracies, Ceglia has offered new tidbits about his life as an international fugitive, along with his wife, Iasia, his two pre-teenage sons and his dog Buddy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt I had no one in government I could trust,\u201d Ceglia wrote in one of four e-mails. \u201cAn opportunity presented itself, so I MacGyver\u2019d some things together and started running for my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ceglia\u2019s whereabouts are unknown; the contents of the e-mails, with the subject line “Paul from Wellsville,” provide a few clues. Ceglia wrote that he is “far from U.S. soil to be sure.” He also wants his family and friends to know that he\u2019s \u201calive and well and living on the air in Cincinnati<\/a>,\u201d apparently a clue about his well-being rather than his whereabouts–it\u2019s a line from the theme song of the television comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati.”<\/p>\n

Charles Salina, the U.S. Marshal for western New York, didn\u2019t return messages seeking comment, and\u00a0Ceglia\u2019s criminal lawyer, Robert Ross Fogg, had no immediate comment. Facebook spokeswoman Vanessa Chan declined to comment.<\/p>\n

If nothing else, the e-mails, received between Aug. 3 and Aug. 8, put yet another twist on a tabloid-ready case that\u2019s been featured in everything from the Wellsville Daily Reporter to the New York Post to national TV networks.<\/p>\n

In his e-mails, Ceglia, 43, said he was forced to flee due to a \u201cvery credible\u201d threat that he would be arrested on new charges, jailed and killed before trial. The reason he was marked for death, he said, was fear that the trial would expose the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency\u2019s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel, in Facebook.<\/p>\n

For more on Ceglia\u2019s original claim, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ceglia\u2019s path from his small town in western New York to international fugitive started in 2003, when he hired Zuckerberg, then a student at Harvard University, to do coding work on his StreetFax.com website. He claims he paid for half of Zuckerberg\u2019s project, then called \u201cThe Face Book,\u201d and that Zuckerberg used StreetFax\u2019s search engine in the early version of the social network.<\/p>\n

Facebook and Zuckerberg have said that Ceglia\u2019s claim is bogus, that Zuckerberg\u2019s contract with Ceglia involved only StreetFax, and that Zuckerberg didn\u2019t conceive of \u201cThe Face Book\u201d until later.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in Buffalo threw out Ceglia\u2019s civil case against Facebook and Zuckerberg in March 2013, agreeing with another judge that he had forged a contract, created fake e-mails between himself and Zuckerberg, and destroyed evidence. Ceglia was charged in 2012 with trying to defraud Facebook and Zuckerberg. He denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Ceglia says he was deprived of his right to a jury trial when the suit against Facebook and Zuckerberg in Buffalo was tossed out at the pretrial stage. And the government\u2019s criminal case, filed 300 miles away in Manhattan while the civil suit was still pending, was also illegal because, in his view, he was prosecuted merely for filing a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

For an update of recent court proceedings, click here.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of your readers may surely think my lawsuit against Facebook was bogus, but if they consider themselves Americans, then they should defend to the death my right under the Constitution of the United States to have a jury\u201d make that decision, Ceglia said.<\/p>\n

Ceglia says he has applied for asylum in a country he won\u2019t identify. His claim that he is living outside of the U.S. could not be verified.\u00a0U.S. marshals say they\u2019re still trying to find him and are offering a $5,000 reward.<\/p>\n

Arriving at Ceglia\u2019s Wellsville, New York, house on March 8, 2015, marshals and state police found Ceglia\u2019s court-ordered ankle bracelet hanging from a homemade \u201cmotorized contraption\u201d mounted on the ceiling. Prosecutors said the device was intended to keep the bracelet moving to make it appear that Ceglia was still in his house.<\/p>\n

Ceglia says he has \u201ca regular job\u201d and hopes to start buying and selling houses soon to make more money.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone including our dog is happy and in good health,\u201d Ceglia wrote. \u201cIt has been a difficult and scary year for Iasia and I but faith in God has seen us through and a determination to get justice has inspired me to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2016-08-16\/facebook-fugitive-alive-and-well-and-living-on-the-air<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook Fugitive \u2018Alive and Well and Living on the Air\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}