Paul Ceglia, the wood-pellet salesman who claims Mark Zuckerberg sold him 50% of Facebook for $1,000 in 2003, has finally answered one of the three obvious questions about his probably-bogus lawsuit: Why he waited 7 years to file it.

(And the answer's a fun one...)

Paul says that he only stumbled on the contract when the cops arrived at his house to arrest him for allegedly defrauding the customers of his wood-pellet business. That arrest got him looking through old files, and, lo and behold, there was a contract saying he owned 84% of Facebook.

In other words, he didn't file the lawsuit until now because he forgot about the contract.

Given the speed with which Facebook gained success and press attention in 2004, 2005, and 2006, it seems unlikely that someone who bought 50% of the project for $1,000 would have forgotten about it. The fact that Ceglia hasn't produced a canceled check or other evidence of the investment makes it even more likely that, as Facebook says, the "contract" Ceglia says he found in his files was forged.

I can't wait until Mark Zuckerberg is working for me again! Classmates.com http://www.classmates.com/directory/public/memberprofile/list.htm?regId=8685615405 Ceglia does say he has other evidence proving he owns the company, including lots of emails. And if the contract was, in fact, forged, we're a bit startled that Ceglia hasn't panicked at the worldwide fame he is gaining and slunk away quietly. (Like the Balloon Boy dad, who stuck to his story for a few minutes and then confessed).

Far from backing down, however, Ceglia is ramping up the rhetoric, as a new interview with Bloomberg shows:

“The work [Mark Zuckerberg] did was really good,” Ceglia said. “He could code. I’d hire him today as a coder.”



Ceglia said he looks forward to a day when he might employ Zuckerberg again.



“If at some point in the future I start running Facebook, I guess I’m going to have to hire him to keep running the company,” Ceglia said. “I really don’t have much interest in it.”

And one more fun fact from the Bloomberg interview:

Another guy has entered the picture, Andrew Logan, the founder of a company called StreetDelivery. Logan says Ceglia was working for him at the time the Facebook contract was drawn up, so that if Ceglia owns Facebook, then Logan actually owns Facebook. Logan is therefore planning his own lawsuit saying he owns the company.

See Also: Checkbook Evidence Suggests Facebook Ownership Contract Is Almost Certainly A Fraud