Paul Ceglia, plaintiff. Photo: facebook.com

The upstate New Yorker Mark Zuckerberg did contract work for in college is full of it, according to a filing today submitted by Mr. Zuckerberg. "Zuckerberg and Ceglia never discussed Facebook and they never signed a contract concerning Facebook," said the filing, submitted in Ceglia v. Zuckerberg et al in the U.S. District Court in Buffalo. "The contract is a cut-and-paste job, the emails are complete fabrications, and this entire lawsuit is a fraud."

Mr. Ceglia filed a lawsuit last summer claiming he had recently found emails and a contract that prove he owns a majority of The Facebook, a story the young paper billionaire called "incredible on its face."

Zuck says he signed an agreement with Mr. Ceglia for work on StreetFax.com, a website that according to Reuters posted photographs of traffic intersections for use in the insurance industry, but has now been converted to a Drudge-esque list of links to stories like "Zuckerberg going to lose 50% of facebook?" and "Paul Ceglia, Facebook Plaintiff, Releases E-mails."

Previously, Facebook called Mr. Ceglia "an inveterate scam artist." They're going full court press, hiring private investigators who have discovered that, "Ceglia was involved in fraudulent land schemes. This adds to previously found scams for selling wood pellets, in addition to a conviction for hallucinogenic mushrooms," the social network watchblog AllFacebook reports. Like all great business sagas, the story of Facebook is becoming a long, strange trip.

UPDATE: Mr. Ceglia's law firm responds: "Mr. Ceglia welcomes the opportunity to expedite discovery in this case and disagrees with the opinions within the filing, which have been made by those who have not examined the actual contract at issue in this case or any of the other relevant evidence."