Facebook CEO …. Mark Zuckerberg to testify at N.Y. forgery trial - prosecutors
Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg delivers remarks in an onstage interview for the Atlantic Magazine
in Washington, September 18, 2013.
(Reuters) - The government
will call Mark Zuckerberg to testify against an upstate New York man accused of
trying to cheat the billionaire founder of Facebook Inc (FB.O) out
of half his stake in the social media company, a federal prosecutor said on
Tuesday.
Zuckerberg is expected to
be a key witness against Paul Ceglia, who is charged with forging a 2003
contract with Zuckerberg that purportedly entitled him to half of Facebook.
“It's a witness that the
government 100 percent knows it will be calling at trial,” Assistant U.S.
Attorney Christopher Frey said at a court hearing before U.S. District Judge
Andrew Carter in New York federal court.
The trial is scheduled for
Nov. 17.
The charges stem in part
from a 2010 civil lawsuit Ceglia filed against Zuckerberg and Facebook in
Buffalo, New York, claiming the two men signed a contract when Zuckerberg was a
freshman at Harvard University that gave Ceglia half of a planned social
networking website.
Zuckerberg had previously
done some programming work for Ceglia’s company, StreetFax.com, and Facebook
has said the only valid contract between them related to that company.
Prosecutors in Manhattan
charged Ceglia in 2012 with forging documents as part of the Buffalo
litigation, including the contract and email correspondence with Zuckerberg.
In March, a Buffalo federal
judge dismissed Ceglia's lawsuit, finding the purported contract for an
ownership stake in Facebook was doctored.
At Tuesday’s hearing,
Carter denied a request from Ceglia’s lawyers to authorize warrants for
Zuckerberg’s cell phones, email accounts and bank records at Facebook from 2003
to 2004 as overly broad.
He also rejected their bid
for Zuckerberg’s Harvard email account and any possible disciplinary records
against him for unauthorized use of the school’s computer system.
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