Paul Ceglia Fined $5,000 In Facebook Case

An anonymous reader writes "U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio has sanctioned Paul Ceglia, a man that claims he owns half Facebook, and ordered him to pay $5,000 to the court. The judge also ordered Ceglia to pay for part of Facebook's attorney fees and expenses, an amount which will likely be much higher. The social networking giant hopes to have Ceglia's lawsuit dismissed early this year."

Blatant Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

What a blatant abuse of the legal system. Now if the RIAA and MPAA were hit with more fines like this for their abuse of the legal system.

Expert Witness

[chrisphotonic]

I live near Ceglia, and his lawyer asked me to be an expert witness in this case. It was a short high paying job, but the lawyer was being secretive about what the project was. I was told it was to check some emails to see if they were authentic.

I didn't sign the NDA right away because the lawyer was acting strangely about my requests to have everything in writing. After doing some googling, I found the lawyers name associated with Ceglia. I told the lawyer about the on-line news articles that saw about Ceglia, that he looked like the scourge of the earth (ripping people off before in some heating scam), and I wanted no part of it. I'm glad I didn't blacken my companies reputation with that crap- if I were to be in the news.

From what I was told, the emails they wanted me to 'verify' were several years old, had no encryption, and no digital signatures of any kind. They wanted to validate the authenticity of plain-text emails, that everyone knows are easy to spoof, and even easier to edit your own copies.