Facebook Fugitive Paul Ceglia Arrested in South America

(Bloomberg) -- Paul Ceglia, the western New York man who fled to escape charges he faked a contract with Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg, is in custody in Ecuador, after more than three years on the lam with his family.

Ceglia, 45, had been missing, along with his wife, two sons and dog, since March 2015, when U.S. marshals forced their way into Ceglia’s Wellsville, New York, home and discovered he’d cut off an ankle bracelet and attached it to a ceiling-mounted, motorized device he rigged to hide his escape. He was awaiting trial on fraud charges in New York.

A judge in Buffalo, New York, had already thrown out Ceglia’s claim to half of Facebook, ruling that he forged a 2003 contract and fabricated emails between him and Zuckerberg, who was then a student at Harvard University. Ceglia, who denied wrongdoing, was charged criminally in 2012.

Read more about Facebook fugitive ‘alive and well and living on the air’

Ceglia was arrested Thursday morning, U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick. Officers identified Ceglia’s wife, Iasia, then followed her home and made the arrest, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ceglia’s lawyer in the criminal case, Robert Ross Fogg, said he hasn’t heard from his client or from law enforcement officials about the arrest.

“If this is true, then I’m relieved,” Fogg said. “I am hoping that everyone is safe and that everybody gets back safely.”

Ceglia will appear in court in Quito, the capital, within 24 hours for a hearing on extraditing him to the U.S., Berman said in the letter.

The marshals had been seeking Ceglia, who skipped out on a $250,000 bond guaranteed by his brother and parents. They had offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to Ceglia’s arrest.

Ceglia surfaced briefly in a series of emails to a Bloomberg reporter in August 2016. Ceglia said he was alive and well, “living on the air in Cincinnati” -- a reference to the television comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati” -- and didn’t disclose his location.

“I felt I had no one in government I could trust,” Ceglia wrote in one email, before using a reference to a second TV series. “An opportunity presented itself, so I MacGyver’d some things together and started running for my life.”

The case is U.S. v. Ceglia, 12-cr-00876, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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