Original Contract Used By Paul Ceglia To Claim Facebook Ownership... Doesn't Mention Facebook

from the falling-apart dept

The latest chapter in the bizarre story of Paul Ceglia claiming a right to more than half of Facebook is that Facebook -- who has previously claimed that Ceglia is nothing but a fraud -- says that in the discovery process it found the original contract, and that contract doesn't even mention Facebook. Facebook pretty clearly is suggesting that Ceglia doctored the contract he did have with Mark Zuckerberg, to work on a Ceglia project called StreetFax, and changed it to supposedly cover Facebook. If you look at the two documents side by side you can see clearly that the original was changed. The fact that both have handwriting and both MZ and PC's initials on it show that this is the same document: Given this evidence, and how this case has gone so far, especially with multiple lawyers dumping Ceglia (including some big names who surprised a lot of people in taking his case originally), it doesn't look like Ceglia has much of a chance here. I'm still a bit mystified that Zuckerberg and Facebook didn't come out more vehemently originally. When the story first came out, Facebook's lawyers simply said they were unsure if the contract was legit. You would think that if he'd never signed any such thing, the denials would have been a lot more upfront. Still, in the end, this case looks dead in the water.

Filed Under: equity, mark zuckerberg, ownership, paul ceglia, scam
Companies: facebook

Paul Ceglia's Big Time Law Firm Drops Him In His Case To Claim Ownership Of A Giant Chunk Of Facebook

from the due-diligence? dept

When Paul Ceglia refiled his lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that he's entitled to at least 50% (and perhaps more) of the company due to an agreement Zuckerberg supposedly signed in the very early days, one of the key things that caught the eye of legal watchers was that Ceglia had retained legal giant DLA Piper to represent him in the case. DLA Piper is a huge, respected law firm and law firms like that generally don't take on cases where fraud may be involved -- as Facebook has been alleging with Ceglia. Actually, for many, the fact that DLA Piper agreed to jump on the case after doing some "due diligence" gave the case credibility which it had lacked previously.

Since then, however, Facebook has been even more aggressive in claiming the whole thing is a fraud and presented some pretty compelling evidence suggesting that the emails that Ceglia presented were not, in fact, written by Mark Zuckerberg at all.

And... just like that, DLA Piper is no longer representing Paul Ceglia. No explanation has been given, but for the folks who thought the association brought Ceglia credibility, seeing him abruptly dropped by the law firm (especially so soon after Facebook's response) certainly will have the opposite effect. It reduces the likelihood that Ceglia has a strong case.

Filed Under: equity, mark zuckerberg, ownership, paul ceglia, scam
Companies: dla piper, facebook

Facebook, Once Again, Says That Ceglia's Claim To Own 84% Of Facebook Is A Fraud

from the strong-words dept

Back in April, when Paul Ceglia refiled his lawsuit claiming to have a contract which gave him a huge chunk (up to 84%) of Facebook, some people pointed out that the refiled lawsuit sounded a lot more credible. There was additional email evidence and (mainly) the fact that a huge, extremely reputable law firm had taken on Ceglia as a client -- something they likely wouldn't do if they thought the whole thing was faked. However, Facebook is sticking to its claim that the whole thing is an elaborate fraud by "an inveterate scam artist whose misconduct extends across decades and borders." The response claims that the evidence was doctored or fabricated. It seems like this case is going to end up being a lot more interesting to watch than the Winklevii case. Someone alert Aaron Sorkin to the sequel possibilities...

Filed Under: equity, mark zuckerberg, ownership, paul ceglia, scam
Companies: facebook

No, Just Because A Site Contains 'Academic' 'Advantage' & 'Scam' On The Same Page, It Is Not Defamation Against Academic Advantage

from the bogus-threats dept

There are all sorts of bogus legal threats out there, but every so often you see ones that take the concept of the bogus legal threat to a new and more astounding level. I would argue that the following legal threat, sent to BoingBoing qualifies. On January 13th, BoingBoing received a cease & desist letter from the law firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh, written by Jubin Niamehr (who appears to be the only attorney at the firm not to get his name in the law firm's name). The complaint against BoingBoing is almost too bizarre to be believed. Basically, the law firm represents a company named Academic Advantage. In 2009, Boingboing wrote a blog post that had absolutely nothing to do with the company Academic Advantage. However, it did use the phrase "academic advantage" in the title of a post called "Autism as an academic advantage."

Again, the post had absolutely nothing to do with the company Academic Advantage.

Then, way down in the comments, an anonymous commenter talked about his own experience with autism and academia. In it, that commenter notes that, in his opinion, college was "a scam." Once again, this commenter is not speaking about the company Academic Advantage at all. He is not calling the company Academic Advantage a scam.

So what happens? According to Niamehr, apparently representing the company Academic Advantage, somehow, this all adds up to a prima facie case of defamation against Academic Advantage:

It is clear there is no purpose to this web address but to falsely accuse the Academic Advantage of being a scam or at least associating the Academic Advantage with a scam. There is absolutely no helpful reason for the website to have the words "Academic," "Advantage" and "Scam" which leads me to believe it was created for malicious purposes. Claiming that our client's tutoring services program is a "SCAM" is prima facie defamation and designed to do nothing more than damage our client's reputation.

I would love to see this law firm go to court and try to defend the claim that the post on BoingBoing (which is actually quite interesting) was designed to do nothing more than damage Academic Advantage when absolutely nothing in the post or the comments is about the company Academic Advantage. Furthermore, of course, making this even more ridiculous, the "scam" part of it (which again, is not at all about the company Academic Advantage) was put there by a commenter, so even if this was defamatory -- which again, it cannot be, since it's not about the company -- then the law firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh, and its partner Jubin Niamehr, should know that the site itself is protected from such charges by Section 230 of the CDA, since the "scam" claim would have come from a commenter. But, of course, you don't even need to get that far, since nothing on the page talks about the company in question.

One would hope that Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh did not charge the company Academic Advantage for the time it took to put together such a letter.

Filed Under: academic, advantage, scam
Companies: academic advantage, lazar akiva yagoubzadeh

French Court Forcing Google To Remove Word 'Scam' From Google Suggest

from the public-interest? dept

Last year we wrote about two contradictory rulings in France involving lawsuits by companies upset about how Google Suggest works. As you probably know, as you type a query into Google, it tries to "suggest" the rest of the query, based on common searches beginning with what you typed. This is all done automatically and is an algorithmic function of what people are actually searching on. The "problem" was that in one case, people were searching for the name of a company, Centre National Prive de Formation a Distance (CNFDI), and one of the most popular searches, meaning one of the suggested searches, was to follow CNFDI with "arnaque," which means "scam." In one case, from a company called Direct Energie, the court ruled that it was Google's fault -- and oddly blamed the fact that the results were not alphabetical to suggest Google was at fault. The better ruling came in the CNFDI case where the court pointed out that search engines are "important tools for the free circulation of ideas and information," and the fact that many people were questioning whether CNFDI was a scam was, in fact, important and potentially useful information, and thus not libelous by itself. It also said that the burden on free speech would be too great if Google were forced to remove the suggestion.

So much for that ruling. Reader Mike Read has sent in the news that an appeals court has reversed the CNFDI ruling and found Google liable. Its reasoning is that Google lets people alert the company to "offensive" terms in Google suggest, and it believes that "scam" is an offensive term. I have to question that logic. If people are legitimately concerned that there are scams going on, why shouldn't that be expressed?

Filed Under: defamation, france, google suggest, scam
Companies: cnfdi, google

Patent Office Insider Funnels $500k To Minister

from the ah,-the-uspto dept

This certainly isn't a condemnation of the USPTO itself, but apparently a financial analyst within the PTO worked with a minister to steal more than $500,000. The minister has plead guilty, but the PTO employee is still just under investigation:

One of the patent employee's tasks was to process requests for funds from customers who had completed the application process, documents said. In his guilty plea, Reid said the patent office employee identified accounts that had gone dormant. She then changed the name on the accounts to Redeemed Music House and wired the cash to the company's bank account.

Court documents show that the patent worker stole a total of $534,338 over 32 transfers, 27 of which were to Reid. It is unclear from documents where the other $80,000 went.

This is obviously a scam by a corrupt employee, but a couple folks submitted it, noting that with so much interest in the USPTO around these parts, some folks might be interested. It's certainly not a condemnation of the USPTO (it does plenty of things officially for that), as it's pretty clearly a bad employee scamming money.

Filed Under: patent office, scam, theft

Yet Another Run On A Virtual Bank

from the but-don't-get-too-excited-over-it dept

A couple years ago, there were stories about how there was a "run" on the virtual banks of Second Life. Later on, some reporters tried to suggest that the Second Life "credit crunch" was a predictor of the real world's credit crunch. That wasn't even close to true. Yet, with yet another story about a virtual world, we're once again hearing in-apt comparisons to the real world. The latest is a run on a bank in the game EVE Online. In this case, it looks like one of the guys involved in running the "bank" simply took some of the virtual currency out of the bank and exchanged it for real world cash (about $5k). The BBC headline calling it "billions stolen" is inaccurate, since it was only "billions" in the meaningless virtual currency. In the real world, it translated into not very much at all. The BBC article also calls it a "virtual version of the credit crunch." Again, this is quite inaccurate. In both the Second Life bank run and this bank run the problem was simply outright fraud by the "virtual banks" or those who run them. That's quite different than what has happened with the real world credit crunch, and it does little good to pretend otherwise.

Filed Under: bank run, eve online, scam, virtual bank, virtual worlds

Tim Berners-Lee Conned By Web Scam?

from the that's-cold dept

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, has now admitted that he was recently conned out of some money by a "fake company" that he found online, when searching for a place to buy some presents. While some will leap to the conclusion that "something needs to be done!" when even the web's inventor can become a victim of fraud online, I don't see how it's really any different than traditional fraud. People can and will get taken in by frauds. It's what happens. That the fraud happened online, or that it happened to the guy who invented the web hardly seems particularly meaningful here.

Filed Under: scam, tim berners-lee, web

Students Using Speed Cameras To Frame Other Kids

from the guilty-until-proven-innocent dept

In general, we have trouble with things like speed cameras and red light cameras -- both of which don't tend to do much of anything to make the roads safer (rather, there's evidence that they lead to more accidents). The reality is that they are really about boosting revenue for local governments, not about safety -- which explains why plenty of places have been found illegally changing parameters to make them bring in more revenue.

But the biggest problem of all is just that these cameras aren't reliable at all, and without any human witness it seems unfair to charge someone with a crime -- especially when they do things like charge a stationary brick wall with going 58mph or accuse a woman of driving a car at a stunning 480 mph. And, of course, when you have an automated system sending out violation notices, you just know it's going to get gamed. That's exactly what appears to be happening. Slashdot points out a story of students in Maryland making fake license plates matching other students' plates, slapping them on their cars and speeding by speed cameras in order to get other students slapped with fines. And, of course, others have seen similar attempts for more nefarious reasons. At what point did we decide it was okay for automated systems to issue fines without any human review?

Filed Under: scam, speed cameras

Online Poker Cheating Scam Unraveled

from the whodunit dept

Slashdot points us to the news that the well known online poker playing site UltimateBet.com has been fined $1.5 million as part of an ongoing investigation into what appears to be a rather massive scheme to defraud online poker players by giving some insiders the ability to see all the cards other players held. Over the past year, this story has been building up steam, as the fraud was actually called out by some other players who questioned how certain players had been able to win so much. Using statistical analysis, it was shown to have been close to impossible, without inside knowledge, and the latest report does, indeed, pin some of the blame on a well-known poker player who was an initial "consultant" to one of the companies involved in this mess. If you read the MSNBC link above, you'll see that there are a number of different companies involved, but it sounds as though many are simply shell companies for the same group of people, with attempts to move assets around for a variety of purposes. So, it's not yet entirely clear who was involved beyond the one player named, but more names are expected to be released later this year, as investigators finish up their investigation.

What may be most interesting about the whole ordeal was that it was exposed not by the body charged with actually regulating the online casino, but other players who were able to sniff out the details working together in online forums. Chalk another one up to the wisdom of the crowd.

Filed Under: cheating, online poker, scam
Companies: ultimatebet.com