New emails filed in California state court prove that Mark Zuckerberg tried to get out of a promise to hook up a real estate developer with some of his high-powered pals, according to a new filing in the case.
Emails between employees at Zuckerberg’s Facebook and the billionaire’s financial adviser show a concerted effort not only to downgrade the tech titan’s promise to help the developer, but also to get out of the pledge altogether, the filing said.
“I just had a quick chat with Mark on this issue — and he said he does remember saying that he would help this guy in a ‘light’ way,” reads one email, written in November 2013 by Andrea Besmehn, a Facebook employee.
“Is there a way when we can chat with him that we can find a way for us (not necessarily Mark) to help him with something small?” Besmehn wrote in the email as she discussed Zuckerberg’s pledge with an army of Facebook helpers.
Zuckerberg’s pledge to developer Mircea Voskerician stems from a 2012 deal in which the Facebook co-founder bought the property directly in back of his $7 million Palo Alto home.
The 30-year-old CEO agreed to pay $6.5 million for the property — including a $1.7 million fee to Voskerician. The developer claims the fee was steeply discounted — by about $2.6 million, compared to a second offer — but came with plenty of upside: the Facebook billionaire’s promise to introduce the developer to some of his deep-pocketed pals.
Shortly after Voskerician approached Zuckerberg, whose net worth hovers around $32.2 billion, the tech titan famously shelled out $43.8 million for several other nearby homes in leafy Palo Alto to secure his privacy.
Voskerician sued Zuckerberg for fraud in Santa Clara County Superior Court in May, claiming that he was duped into selling the home to Zuckerberg on the cheap because the CEO never intended to follow through on his promise to introduce Voskerician to rich friends from Facebook, Google and Apple. Zuckerberg evaded him for months despite his efforts to set up meetings, call his office and send him letters, he said.
The emails included in Tuesday’s filing buttress that claim, David Draper, the developer’s lawyer, said in the filing, which seeks to amend the original complaint.
One email in the filing, from Divesh Makan of Iconiq Capital, Zuckerberg’s financial adviser, is particularly stinging.
“We paid him a healthy price for his property,” Makan, a former Goldman Sachs banker, told Besmehn in the same email chain. “We have no interest in doing anything with him, but [your suggestion to have others help him with something small] will hopefully put his desire to met Mark to bed.”
The filing seeks to add Makan — an adviser to other wealthy tech execs, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and former Zynga CEO Mark Pincus — as a defendant in the case.
The latest court filings show that Besmehn sounded the alarm to Makan and others at Facebook, including Facebook president Elliot Schrage, after a Facebook engineer forwarded to Besmehn a Voskerician-to-Zuckerberg letter he had received.
The engineer didn’t know Voskerician, but told Besmehn that the developer is “connected to more prominent Romanians in California, so I assume this is not totally bogus.”
“Now this is escalating with the direct letter,” Besmehn warned the group.
Voskerician’s letter fawned over Zuckerberg and sought his help with business. Among the stranger requests, Voskerician’s letter sought to present Zuckerberg with “a unique and innovative idea . . . that I believe will work hand in hand with Facebook applications.”
Voskerician said he had “presented the idea to a few VC’s who literally love it,” and that he could get $200,000 in funding for the idea, “but need to develop it further.”
He also said he had two new homes he wanted to “promote to Facebook employees,” including a $6 million “French Country style home close to downtown Menlo Park.”
And he offered to redo Zuckerberg’s basement, saying he would make the Facebook chief his “top priority.”
“Definitely not interested in using his services as a developer,” Besmehn said in the emails.
“It was an honor and privilege to meet I through Facebook, an innovation that has changed both our lives,” Voskerician’s letter said. “I consider you to be a very honorable and ethical person.”