Paul Ceglia claims Mark Zuckerberg owed him half of Facebook.
The story sounded crazy from the start: a guy from upstate New York claimed Mark Zuckerberg owed him half of Facebook and he had the papers to prove it.
Now, it's gotten even crazier.
More than a year after the man, Paul Ceglia, cut off an electronic ankle bracelet and fled federal charges that he faked documents to bolster his lawsuit against Zuckerberg, Ceglia says someone -- he didn't say who -- was planning to have him killed.
In e-mails to Bloomberg that reference cult television favorites and hint at government conspiracies, Ceglia has offered new tidbits about his life as an international fugitive, along with his wife, Iasia, his two pre-teenage sons and his dog Buddy.
"I felt I had no one in government I could trust," Ceglia wrote in one of four emails. "An opportunity presented itself, so I MacGyver'd some things together and started running for my life."
Ceglia's whereabouts are unknown; the contents of the emails, with the subject line "Paul from Wellsville," provide a few clues. Ceglia wrote that he is "far from U.S. soil to be sure." He also wants his family and friends to know that he's "alive and well and living on the air in Cincinnati," apparently a clue about his well-being rather than his whereabouts--it's a line from the theme song of the television comedy "WKRP in Cincinnati."
Charles Salina, the U.S. Marshal for western New York, didn't return messages seeking comment, and Ceglia's criminal lawyer, Robert Ross Fogg, had no immediate comment. Facebook spokeswoman Vanessa Chan declined to comment.
If nothing else, the emails, received between Aug. 3 and Aug. 8, put yet another twist on a tabloid-ready case that's been featured in everything from the Wellsville Daily Reporter to the New York Post to national TV networks.
In his emails, Ceglia, 43, said he was forced to flee due to a "very credible" threat that he would be arrested on new charges, jailed and killed before trial. The reason he was marked for death, he said, was fear that the trial would expose the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency's venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel, in Facebook.
Ceglia's path from his small town in western New York to international fugitive started in 2003, when he hired Zuckerberg, then a student at Harvard University, to do coding work on his StreetFax.com website. He claims he paid for half of Zuckerberg's project, then called "The Face Book," and that Zuckerberg used StreetFax's search engine in the early version of the social network.
Facebook and Zuckerberg have said that Ceglia's claim is bogus, that Zuckerberg's contract with Ceglia involved only StreetFax, and that Zuckerberg didn't conceive of "The Face Book" until later.
A federal judge in Buffalo threw out Ceglia's civil case against Facebook and Zuckerberg in March 2013, agreeing with another judge that he had forged a contract, created fake emails between himself and Zuckerberg, and destroyed evidence. Ceglia was charged in 2012 with trying to defraud Facebook and Zuckerberg. He denies wrongdoing.
Ceglia says he was deprived of his right to a jury trial when the suit against Facebook and Zuckerberg in Buffalo was tossed out at the pretrial stage. And the government's criminal case, filed 300 miles away in Manhattan while the civil suit was still pending, was also illegal because, in his view, he was prosecuted merely for filing a lawsuit.
"Some of your readers may surely think my lawsuit against Facebook was bogus, but if they consider themselves Americans, then they should defend to the death my right under the Constitution of the United States to have a jury" make that decision, Ceglia said.
Ceglia says he has applied for asylum in a country he won't identify. His claim that he is living outside of the U.S. could not be verified. U.S. marshals say they're still trying to find him and are offering a $5,000 reward.
Arriving at Ceglia's Wellsville, New York, house on March 8, 2015, marshals and state police found Ceglia's court-ordered ankle bracelet hanging from a homemade "motorized contraption" mounted on the ceiling. Prosecutors said the device was intended to keep the bracelet moving to make it appear that Ceglia was still in his house.
Ceglia says he has "a regular job" and hopes to start buying and selling houses soon to make more money.
"Everyone including our dog is happy and in good health," Ceglia wrote. "It has been a difficult and scary year for Iasia and I but faith in God has seen us through and a determination to get justice has inspired me to keep going."
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)