Facebook Bought for $1000? 85% Ownership Indicated by Lawsuit

Recently it’s come to light that Mark Zuckerberg may not actually fully own Facebook at all. A lawsuit filed in a New York Court by a Paul D. Ceglia states that the original Facebook site has been bought by him for the sum of $1000. According to the lawsuit, in 2003 Zuckerberg was paid $1000 by Ceglia for the service of building a website which was to be called “TheFacebook”.

Ceglia should’ve gotten a 50% interest in the website’s revenue, as well as 1% of the company for every day following January 1, 2004 during which the website wasn’t yet finished. Zuckerberg managed to complete the website on February 4, 2004, which gave Ceglia an extra 34% interest in the business, amounting to a total of 84%.

Zuckerberg went on to create a separate website called simply Facebook, as well as found a company to go with it, Facebook Inc. The website is currently the most massive social network in the entire Internet, spanning over 500 million members. According to Ceglia, what we have now as Facebook is simply a project which Zuckerberg branched off of the original TheFacebook – which apparently entitles Ceglia to 84% of the company.

Even though Facebook are taking the lawsuit lightly and trying to brush it off, the judge who’s presiding over the case has halted all asset transactions for Facebook. The outlook still doesn’t look good for Ceglia though, considering the statute of limitations for this type of cases in New York.

Source: PCWorld