Tia Oja,

Correspondent (Business)

 

NEW YORK – The American entrepreneur Paul Ceglia, 39, has been charged for claiming to owe 50% of the multi-billion company Facebook.

Ceglia was arrested in New York last Friday for destroying and falsifying evidence in an attempt to defraud Facebook as well as its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. He attended court later that day.

In 2003, Zuckerberg worked with Ceglia by doing programming for him and his company. The men signed a contract regarding to their cooperation of developing street-mapping software. In 2010 Ceglia filed a lawsuit against Facebook claiming he and Zuckerberg had written a contract stating that 50% of the social networking service was owed by Ceglia.

Authorities say Ceglia had forged the contract. In addition, he had written false emails between himself and Zuckerberg.

The Facebook fraud is not the first time the New York businessman has operated against the law. In 2009 his company Allegany Pellets LLC got in trouble as he was charged for defraud as well as several counts of fourth-degree grand larceny.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is estimated to have a net worth of 9.4 billion US dollars. His creation is one of the internet’s most visited sites and has been evaluated to be worth 104bn dollars by some financial researchers. In eight years the company has grown incredibly fast and Facebook has today roughly one billion active users.

An American film about Facebook, The Social Network, was released October 2010. The film portrays the founding of Facebook and the lawsuits Zuckerberg was faced with. It can be questioned how much of the film is based on reality. However, the film got amazing reviews around the world and made 224 920 315 dollars in the box offices.