Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg is going to have a day in court, as a potential victim of what would have been the most stupid con trick in the history of scamming. Paul Ceglia is on trial for pretending that Zuckerburg signed a contract with him to give him half of his stake of Facebook if the idea took off. Ceglia broke one of the rules of such a swindle by making it extremely public and attempting to get lawyers involved.

In 2010, Ceglia sued against Zuckerberg and Facebook in Buffalo, New York, claiming the two men signed a contract when Zuckerberg was a freshman at Harvard University that gave Ceglia half of a planned social networking website. It was possible, as Zuckerberg had previously done some programing work for Ceglia’s company, StreetFax.com. However when coppers had a look at the contract and emails between the two men, which should have been expected in a high-profile case, they discovered that it appeared to have been forged. 

In March, a Buffalo federal judge dismissed Ceglia's lawsuit, finding the purported contract for an ownership stake in Facebook was doctored.

Ceglia is going out fighting. His lawyers to authorize warrants for Zuckerberg’s mobile phones, email accounts and bank records at Facebook from 2003 to 2004. A judge said that was a little broad and told them no. He also told them that they could not did up some personal dirt on Zuckerberg by seeing his Harvard email account and any possible disciplinary records against him for unauthorised use of the school’s computer system.