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U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

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Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#31

Post by alexqgb »

mtgx wrote: post #6
fleitz wrote: post #4

Mail fraud... looks like some AG spent too much time watching "The Firm"

They can arrest people whenever they want with "loopholes" like these, and yet they can't seem to do a damn thing about any of the bankers who helped bring down the economy. Yeah, I just don't buy that.

Elliot Spitzer - who knows all about books been suddenly thrown in cases that routinely go unpunished - has some choice words about this in "Inside Job". Having been on both sides of the table, he is entirely credible when saying that the dearth of prosecutions reflected a lack of will, not an absence of ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#32

Post by tptacek »

leoh wrote: post #5

Did this line strike anyone else as pathetic? In today’s press release, USPIS Inspector-in-Charge Randall C. Till added: “When Mr. Ceglia allegedly decided to take advantage of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, he underestimated the resolve of the Postal Inspection Service to bring him to justice for illegal use of the U.S. Mail.” Ceglia is probably in the wrong and unethical. But the self-righteousness and pompadour of…

Mail fraud is a very big deal, because it is one of the DoJ's most important vectors for prosecuting fraud federally. Like "tax evasion", it's a means for the DoJ to pick up major cases in federal venues where the alternative might instead need to be costly, time-consuming coordinated state cases.

The statutes that make mail fraud a federal crime do indeed play up the sanctity of the US Postal Service, which is an idea that comes from the 1800's (when the US Postal Service played a far more important role in our society than it does today). But if the US Postal Service has gotten less important, the mail fraud statutes haven't. In the same manner that tax fraud makes criminal enterprises more difficult to scale and sustain (by making it much more difficult to handle the funds those enterprises generate), the mail fraud statutes make it harder to scale organized criminal efforts across state lines, by making the abuse of the communication services our society provides a crime in and of itself.

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#34

Post by unreal37 »

I wonder what will happen to his lawyers. And I wonder what the judge thinks.

Ceglia has had a couple of lawyers (Argentieri and Boland) who have been filing discovery motions, and really aggressively going after Facebook and Zuckerberg. If you read only a couple of their filings, it seems really personal for them. They are absolutely offended at Facebook's lawyers behavior, really aggressive in the wording of their filings, and going so far as to call out FB lawyers by name and complain about them.

And now it turns out the US Govt found the real contract from email archives and it doesn't match at all.

I'd like to see the lawyers punished somehow (reprimanded) for pushing this obvious fraud through the court system so hard and for so long.

And if I were the judge, wasting 2 years of his life on a sham case like this, I'd be furious. They were still submitting filings even as of yesterday!

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#35

Post by danielweber »

joezydeco wrote: post #14
nostromo wrote: post #11

I was struck when we incorporated our company and raised financing how much we still use ink and paper to keep track of things like corporate ownership. When signing so many documents I wanted to seal them with paraffin wax and send them to our lawyers via carrier pigeon. In the case of Facebook, a multi-billion dollar company, it seems amazing that someone can come out of the woodwork and with a little effort in doc…

I always wondered if there was a need for a cheaper, worldwide document certification system. Of course you can get a notary to stamp a document or file it with the county clerk in your jurisdiction. But what about taking an MD5 of a PDF and printing it in the newspaper? Would that work?

A long time ago I posed md5's to usenet test groups when I wanted to prove I wrote something.

You have to worry about people breaking things. Raw MD5 is considered useless today, since there are tools that make two documents with the same MD5.

This would not necessarily invalidate all prior MD5s; if you published like that 10 years before people starting breaking MD5, that would be pretty good evidence you really did do it, unless your idea is so amazingly valuable that it was more worthwhile to try to forge documents instead of publicizing your research.

Using a few different HMACs in parallel would probably give you good proof.

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#36

Post by domainregistry »

grellas wrote: post #21

A few thoughts: 1. When Ceglia first filed his claims, I called it a "lawsuit full of holes [that was] built up by sensationalist reporting into a supposed major threat to Facebook and to Mr. Zuckerberg" and concluded that, "in the courts, this thing is going nowhere." ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1537158 ) My sense of this had nothing to do with any fraudulent tampering with evidence as alleged now in the c…

"and retained the prestigious firm of DLA Piper"

What are your thoughts on the pox on DLA Piper's house as a result of taking him on as a client? Doesn't it speak to their naiveté after reviewing the materials he was able to present? Or?

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#37

Post by tptacek »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #29
jallmann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Postal Inspection Service is a useful tool. Mail fraud brings down a lot of sleazeballs that would otherwise have gotten away. Maybe because that's the last thing they would think to cover up.

You make it sound like one of those grab-bag offenses like resisting arrest that effectively amount to `you pissed off the government and now we're going to punish you for it'.

He may have made it sound like that, but it is not. It's a federal felony, and it's generally used to foreclose on large-scale scam operations.

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#38

Post by danielweber »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #29
jallmann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Postal Inspection Service is a useful tool. Mail fraud brings down a lot of sleazeballs that would otherwise have gotten away. Maybe because that's the last thing they would think to cover up.

You make it sound like one of those grab-bag offenses like resisting arrest that effectively amount to `you pissed off the government and now we're going to punish you for it'.

Except "resisting arrest" is your word against an officer's, while "mail fraud" (from what I understand, IANAL) still requires the state to meet the burden of proof.

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#39

Post by tptacek »

shasta wrote: post #24
kfury wrote: post #8

I'm disappointed by all the folks calling mail fraud a 'loophole'. Mail and wire fraud are the ways people prosecute domestic 419 (Nigerian prince) scams and other confidence games. This case shouldn't be given a free pass just because the party intended to be deceived is the judicial system rather than the mail recipient.

Legality of fraud should have nothing to do with whether the mail was used.

It doesn't, really. The only difference is the venue where it's prosecuted.

Re: U.S. Arrests Paul Ceglia for Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Defraud Facebook

#40

Post by Goronmon »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #29
jallmann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Postal Inspection Service is a useful tool. Mail fraud brings down a lot of sleazeballs that would otherwise have gotten away. Maybe because that's the last thing they would think to cover up.

You make it sound like one of those grab-bag offenses like resisting arrest that effectively amount to `you pissed off the government and now we're going to punish you for it'.

It's used often because it's easy to prove, just like tax evasion.
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