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Paul Ceglia Arrested and Charged With Fraud Over Facebook Ownership Claims
whoever57 writes "The man who claimed ownership of 50% of Facebook has been arrested and charged with fraud in connection with his claims. The United States attorney in Manhattan said, '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.' 'Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution.'"
This is the kind of free speech limitation that prevents you from yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater.
You can say what you want, but I guess it crosses the line when you try to sue someone over a false claim, and then falsify evidence as well.
Comparing this to freedom of speech is a bit facetious.
Mark Zuckerberg liked this.
He lied in court papers, he prepared and filed fraudulent documents as part of evidentiary filings and then covered up their creation. Filing false statements to any court is a crime, and it's a very serious crime in federal court.
He can say whatever he wants in private or public, but he can't lie in court. Lieing to the courts has ALWAYS been illegal. Filing false documents in court has ALWAYS been illegal. The justice system can't work if people are allowed to lie and fake documents in court without punishment.
He's going to be lucky if he doesn't get 40 years in PMITA Federal prison.
"Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution"
Then please explain patent trolls to me?
We like free speech when it is the truth.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
If you happen to yell "I own half of Facebook!" in a crowded movie theater full of Slashdot geeks, will a stampede ensue as they will be trying to get as far away from you as possible?
Ezekiel 23:20
"The Social Network" perspective which has been thoroughly refuted.
[citation needed]
In fact, the movie was thoroughly vetted by lawyers from Columbia Pictures, so I seriously doubt this would ever be the case in any substantive way.
Nope. But I think it's funnier to see how many people have no ability to detect sarcasm.
No, probably not.
If you were a cop, would you put as much effort into a case where it's very unlikely anyone would ever hear about it as you would into a case where it's likely the entire country is watching? Nobody wants to screw up when everyone's eyes are on you, but nobody outside of Littleplace, OH cares about Joe's Bike Shop. Do well, screw up, not a huge difference in rewards. But doing well or screwing up on the Facebook case can set the tone for the rest of your life.
I can understand not being happy that the "nobodies" of the world don't get the same special attention, but the fact is that it's not just the human nature of the people doing their jobs that you're railing against, it's the nature of all the people who hear about big and little stories that lead the people doing their jobs to treat those cases differently. No conspiracy necessary for celebrities to get more attention than you or I. The extra attention is what makes them celebrities.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
If he'd stopped at saying: "I own 50% of Facebook" it'd probably be protected speech. Crazy, pitied, ridiculous speech, but free and protected nonetheless.
Once opinion becomes action (like the lawsuit) you're damaging someone. The harm those actions commit should never be considered free speech because even damage on paper has a real effect on someone's life.
-Matt
(Billionaire's problems, I know, but the biggest downside of democracy is you spend most of your time defending scoundrels)
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Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973 when he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They got tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy.
The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner, which they had outfitted with analog-to-digital converters (one each for the red, green, and blue channels) and a Hewlett Packard 2100 minicomputer. The Muirhead had a fixed resolution of 100 lines per inch and the engineers wanted a 512×512 image, so they limited the scan to the top 5.12 inches of the picture, effectively cropping it at the subject's shoulders.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Everything you said is true, but that doesn't make it right. Every officer or detective in the force may WANT to be involved in the high profile cases. Its the job of management to put them back at their desks doing the work that NEEDS to be done.
1987 - 1973 > 20 ???
Management which has as much or more (usually more) to gain or lose from high-profile cases than the beat cop, and so will understandably put their best people on it. It goes all the way up until you finally reach somebody with a position so high that they won't be significantly affected by the outcome, and as long as they're not hearing complaints from the public, they don't care.
Right and wrong are great, but they're a lot more fungible when it's you that it's affecting.
Say you're a low-level investigator, on the edge of losing his house, with a wife and kids. You can spend an hour or two here and there that should have been spent on Joe's Bike Shop on the Facebook case instead to do a really bang-up job where it's going to be noticed, and maybe turn it into a promotion, or at least ensuring that you're not someone picked for the next round of layoffs. Is that such a big deal? One little hour? For your kids?
And let's be honest, that one little hour isn't a big deal, especially if it's you that's taking that one little hour, and we probably wouldn't begrudge that one guy his chance to finally get out from under his debt even if we weren't imagining that we are that guy. But, that story plays out a thousand times, and it adds up, and people try harder on the important cases.
And then, finally, what the fuck are you doing for Joe's Bike Shop? Because whether you know it or not, you're contributing to the attention the Facebook case is getting just by posting in this thread, or even reading it. You're eyes are seeing ads, or if you've got adblock on, by commenting in the story you're at the very least adding content to a site that's selling ads, who gets money from Facebook, who gets money from countless advertisers, who gives that money to people all over, including politicians, wh... you get the idea. You, personally, are adding to the motivation to give Facebook better justice, and are not adding that same motivation to Joe's Bike Shop, and are therefore contributing to the imbalance. The only possible way out of that is to expect people to treat two people who have vastly different potential effects on their future the same, and that's just not rational to expect of an actual person, and not just the abstraction who's not doing his job that you're probably imagining.
Everybody acts in perfectly reasonable, understandable and if not perfectly moral, certainly not what most would call immoral ways, and aggregate effects end up shafting the little guy. That's not to say that sometimes there aren't more sinister activities and motivations, but usually, it's just emergent behavior from a whole lot of people acting the exact same way you would in their situation. High-profile people get more attention. That's not to say that we shouldn't do what we can to ensure that the little guy gets justice, we absolutely should do what we can to even things up. But there's no sense in getting all self-righteous about it. You might as well get mad that electrons orbit protons, it's just the way things are.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
It's even simpler than that. 1st Amendment protects you from prosecution by the government for the fact and the content of your speech. It does not imply that you speech will have no consequences at all, including legal ones. If you damaged somebody by your speech - or intended to damage - you still can be prosecuted and sued. If, for example, you wrote a program and used it to steal money from the bank - you can not avoid prosecution claiming programming is like speech so it's protected by 1st amendment. It may be like speech, but stealing money isn't. In the same vein, saying "I own Facebook" is protected speech. Undertaking fraudulent legal actions with intent to steal Facebook's money under false premises of owning Facebook is not protected at all. Ceglia is getting a lesson about it right now.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
You are making a strong assumption. You are assuming that you know about the times when it happened, and they weren't caught. But that is not what one should expect.
The real answer is "We don't have any real idea how often it happens and isn't found out." We know that it happens, because it occasionally is found out. What we don't know is what fraction of the time is it found out. My guess would be a very small fraction. Probably considerably less than 1%. But I must acknowledge that a guess is all this is.
OTOH, I consider that anyone who asserts definitely any particular percentage is misrepresenting the truth. I suspect that most of them are not intentionally lying, but the action they are performing is lying, even if that isn't their intent.
I doubt that it's possible to come up with a reasoned estimate. To assert that it's a common activity is, probably, more plausible than to assert that it almost never happens. The truth is likely to lie somewhere in between, but just where is not determinable without evidence that has been carefully hidden in diverse ways by diverse people (and NEVER centrally collected).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
effectively cropping it at the subject's shoulders.
Everybody's got their kinks, but who ever heard of "shoulder porn?"
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It is obvious you have never worked in an investigative agency or really understand the politics involved.
First, this is a case that is being brought by the federal government. A high profile case. This means that the political stakes are very high, which can play a huge role in the prosecution of this case. So let's put things in order, shall we?
As a federal case in the Western District of New York, this falls under the prosecutorial purview of the United States Attorney's Office. Currently, that would be William Hochul and his deputies. For those unaware, the USA is an appointed post by the President. In a little over a week, this man is going to know if he has a job or not since his position is tied to Obama's success or failure. Contrary to popular opinion, many of the higher level government officials are pretty smart cookies. They know how to take an opportunity and they know how to position themselves. Having one of the highest profile civil cases taking place in your district with one of the highest profile companies on the planet is like a gift from above. Don't piss off Facebook and there might be a nice position with them either directly or indirectly through the big law firm you'll become a partner with after you leave the USA's office.
This up's the stakes. Now, the deputy in charge of the criminal prosecution division will be getting pressure from his boss to look into this Ceglia guy. After all he's a bad apple having previously been charged by Andrew Cuomo when he was the AG of NY. So the criminal prosecutor tells the Special Agent in Charge of the local FBI office in Buffalo to look into this. A case agent is assigned, along with the other bundle of cases already assigned to him or her, which could be anywhere from 10 to 40 in various stages of closure. So the case agent makes a couple calls to obtain the evidence, in this case the hard drive images and other bits and pieces, which are probably in the safe keeping of Facebook's attorneys, Ceglia's attorney's, or both. They may even do a warrant for new evidence.
All the computer evidence will get shipped off to the FBI computer lab, which in this case would be the regional computer forensics lab in Buffalo. There, a multi-agency task force works that sifts through submitted computer evidence for forensic artifacts and puts together a report on their findings. And that's exactly what they will do. The Ceglia case will get put into the queue among the cases dealing with child exploitation, terrorism, homicide, etc, and will be given a schedule for completion of somewhere around 6 - 15 months, since after all, this is just a fraud case. But with a little prompting from some highly placed prosecutors, the case will be fast tracked for completion in probably 30 days or less.
So, with the information back from the lab, the FBI agent now compiles the data, meets with the prosecutors and decides options. Do they have enough to go on? Do they need to dismiss the case? Can they bring it to the grand jury? Do they need more? Is the game plan to really bring this to trial or is it to force a plea or to simply destroy credibility?
Sometimes, in a high profile case, a perp-walk is more than enough to satisfy political goals. Ceglia was arrested and the Slashdot hivemind has already convicted him and believed 100% all the claims of the prosecution. Send him to jail now - no need for a trial or to have the evidence reviewed by a forensic examiner on the defense side. The perp-walk worked again. It's more than enough to let the USA be known as a friend of facebook in the event this election doesn't go down the way he would like.
But what about everyone else? The criminal prosecutors? They are career prosecutors so regardless of the administration, they will have a federal job until they decide to retire. The FBI agent(s)? They aren't in much danger of layoff. They will simply keep marching along until their next case comes up or until they rotate to a different duty station or have to go to
"Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion." Sun Tzu