Paul Ceglia

Paul D. Ceglia (born July 22, 1973[1]) is an American fugitive. He is the founder of businesses such as Greensprings Natural Cemetery, StreetFax, PageBook, and Allegany Pellets.[2][3] In 2010, Ceglia brought a lawsuit against Facebook, Inc., claiming ownership of 84% of the company. The judge dismissed Ceglia's claim as fraudulent. Ceglia and his family were found to have vanished on May 1, 2015 after he cut off a GPS tracker. In 2018 he was arrested in Ecuador, where he remains after that country denied the U.S. Justice Department's extradition request.

Biography

Ceglia was born in Wellsville, New York to an Italian-American father, Carmine Ceglia, and an Irish mother.[4] He moved around after high school, spending two years teaching at an alternative school in Taos, New Mexico and opened an ice cream stand in New York.

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.[6]

On June 30, 2010, Ceglia filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, claiming 84% ownership of Facebook and seeking monetary damages.[7] 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.[8] Ceglia and his lawyers have claimed that Facebook planted a fake document on his computer to incriminate him.[9] The evidence presented by Ceglia was determined to be fabricated.[10]

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.[11]

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.[12] On June 29, 2011, DLA Piper withdrew from the case, and Ceglia retained Jeffrey Lake.[13] On October 18, 2011, Lake also withdrew from the case.[14] 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.

Biography

Paul Ceglia vs. Mark Zuckerberg

Legal counsel in Facebook case

Prior Criminal Record

Allegany Pellets LLC

References

Arrest and escape to Ecuador

birth name	Paul D. Ceglia
birth date	July 22, 1973
birth place	Wellsville, New York