Roy Oppenheim’s commentary was originally published on Yahoo! Homes and is being republished on South Florida Law Blog with their permission.
I love hypocrisy, and try as a I might, I can not escape it.
Here is the latest, and it is a rich one. Federal prosecutors have decided to indict a fraudster who tried to bilk Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
Paul Ceglia claimed he had a contract where Zuckerberg gave him half the company years ago in exchange from some coding he did for the young college entrepreneur.
Fast forward and now Ceglia has been accused of being a decent forger but not as good as Frank Abagnale Jr. (the con-man who was memorialized by Leonardo DiCaprio in “Catch Me If You Can“).
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan arrested Ceglia, alleging he faked part of that contract by forging it from parts of a real contract he had with Zuckerberg to work on another site that had nothing to do with Facebook.
If you believe the U.S. attorney’s office, Ceglia is the fed’s version of Abagnale 2.0, a huckster out to make billions at the expense of others.
Here’s what U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release announcing Ceglia’s arrest, after claiming that he doctored, fabricated, and destroyed evidence involved with his initial lawsuit: “Ceglia’s alleged conduct not only constitutes a massive fraud attempt, but also an attempted corruption of our legal system through the manufacture of false evidence. That is always intolerable.”
And that is where I nearly fell out of my chair.
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