The Cheque That Could Prove It All
August 18th, 2010 | by Jen |A western New York man suing over claims he owns 84 per cent of Facebook has a copy of a $US3000 cashier’s cheque that may support his contract claim against the company and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.
The purported cancelled cheque is made out to Zuckerberg and dated three days before Paul Ceglia claims the two men signed a contract in 2003. That agreement, Ceglia said in court papers, entitles him to control of the world’s biggest social networking website.
A copy of the cheque was turned over last week to Ceglia’s side by a Wellsville, New York, branch of Community Bank NA, said Terrence Connors, a lawyer for Ceglia. The Wellsville Daily Reporter published a copy on its website.
The cheque is the first independently produced evidence to be made public of Ceglia’s claimed contractual relationship with Zuckerberg. Connors said the copy of the cheque is among bank records his side has obtained as evidence in the case, now pending in federal court in Buffalo, New York.
Ceglia, 37, said in his June 30 lawsuit that he and Zuckerberg signed a “work for hire” contract in 2003, when Zuckerberg was an 18-year-old Harvard University freshman. The agreement called for Zuckerberg to do computer coding work and provided for a $US1000 investment by Ceglia in a project called “The Face Book”, in exchange for a 50 per cent stake, Ceglia claimed.
The parties are scheduled to be back in federal court in Buffalo on October 13 to argue Ceglia’s motion to have the case returned to state court.