Ecuador Court orders Facebook fugitive back to US to face fraud charges

Paul Ceglia has spent four years on the run to avoid a U.S. trial on charges he tried to cheat Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg out of half the company. Now he’s been ordered home. Ecuador’s National Court of Justice on Wednesday upheld a Nov. 15 extradition ruling requiring that Ceglia be returned to New York to face criminal charges for allegedly making a fraudulent, multibillion-dollar claim to the social media giant. Ceglia skipped his $250,000 bail in 2015 and eluded U.S. law enforcement until he was arrested in August in a small Ecuadorian beach town.

The order, by a panel of three judges in Quito, means Ceglia may face a trial with Facebook CEO Zuckerberg as the star prosecution witness. The Ecuadorian judges rejected Ceglia’s claim that the country’s extradition treaty with the U.S. doesn’t cover the crimes he’s accused of committing.