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Facebook's Zuckerberg to testify at N.Y. forgery trial: Prosecutors

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(Reuters) — The government will call Mark Zuckerberg to testify against an upstate New York man accused of trying to cheat the billionaire founder of Facebook Inc. out of half his stake in the social media company, a federal prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Mr. Zuckerberg is expected to be a key witness against Paul Ceglia, who is charged with forging a 2003 contract with Mr. Zuckerberg that purportedly entitled him to half of Facebook.

“It’s a witness that the government 100% knows it will be calling at trial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Frey said at a court hearing before U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter in New York federal court.

The trial is scheduled for Nov. 17.

The charges stem in part from a 2010 civil lawsuit Mr. Ceglia filed against Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook in Buffalo, New York, claiming the two men signed a contract when Mr. Zuckerberg was a freshman at Harvard University that gave Mr. Ceglia half of a planned social networking website.

Mr. Zuckerberg had previously done some programming work for Mr. Ceglia’s company, StreetFax.com, and Facebook has said the only valid contract between them related to that company.

Prosecutors in Manhattan charged Mr. Ceglia in 2012 with forging documents as part of the Buffalo litigation, including the contract and email correspondence with Mr. Zuckerberg.

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

At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Carter denied a request from Mr. Ceglia’s lawyers to authorize warrants for Mr. Zuckerberg’s cell phones, email accounts and bank records at Facebook from 2003 to 2004 as overly broad.

He also rejected their bid for Mr. Zuckerberg’s Harvard email account and any possible disciplinary records against him for unauthorized use of the school’s computer system.

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