For two years Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher has been hurling words like “fraud” and “scam artist” at Paul Ceglia, who claims to own half of Snyder’s client, Facebook Inc. The scorn kept coming even as law firms like DLA Piper and Milberg signed on to represent Ceglia. Now the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan has sided with Snyder, filing a criminal indictment against Ceglia that resulted in his arrest at his home in Buffalo on Friday.
According to the indictment, which was also unsealed on Friday, Ceglia fabricated and destroyed evidence in his ownership dispute with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO and founder. That dispute is still pending in U.S. district court in Buffalo. The criminal indictment charges him with mail fraud and wire fraud, for which he could face up to 20 years in prison. In a statement, Bharara said that Ceglia had sought “a quick payday based on a blatant forgery.”
