A New York man’s attempts to squeeze billions from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg could land him 40 years in jail.
Federal agents yesterday arrested Paul Ceglia, 39, at his home in Millsville, NY, for allegedly doctoring documents in his bid to seize a majority ownership stake in the social network.
Ceglia, whose own Facebook page portrays him as a peacemaker and environmentalist, pleaded not guilty yesterday in Buffalo federal court.
He was granted release on $21,000 bail but was ordered to remain behind bars until a second hearing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that will give the government time to appeal his bail.
Ceglia, who most recently ran a wood pellet company, sued Zuckerberg in federal court in Buffalo two years ago.
In the civil suit, he alleged that Zuckerberg, then a student at Harvard, signed a contract in 2003 promising him a 50-percent cut of Facebook.
That claim was “entirely false,” according to the complaint brought by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara.
“Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution,” he added.
Prosecutors said Ceglia started off with a real contract that Zuckerberg signed in 2003, forged a new one to support his claim and then destroyed the original.
Ceglia “simply replaced page one of the real contract with a new page one, doctored to make it appear as though Zuckerberg had agreed to provide Ceglia with an interest in Facebook,” according to the complaint.
Prosecutors said they discovered the forgery when searching one of Ceglia’s hard drives. The original 2003 contract showed Zuckerberg agreed to perform certain programming work for Ceglia’s online business, StreetFax.com, in exchange for a fee.
Ceglia had e-mailed a copy of the original contract to an attorney in March 2004, well before he filed his suit. That version of the contract “makes no reference to Facebook in any fashion,” the complaint says.