A Wisconsin, US woman is facing 31 felony counts of theft and forgery for selling and trading up to a million dollars of fake Facebook stock. So much for not getting rich off of the Facebook IPO.
Marianne Oleson convinced several victims that she had bought around $US1 million dollars of Facebook stock prior to the IPO, which she was able to purchase because her daughter knew Mark Zuckerberg (it’s unclear if she actually does). Which could sort of maybe work on totally uninitiated strangers, but, er, she also gave her daughter shares of the fake stock as a Christmas gift.
Other victims include a builder who Oleson owed $US18,000. She convinced him to take the fake stock as payment and conned another $US10,000 in cash from him for additional shares. Investigators say that there are definitely more victims out there that they don’t know about yet, so if you recently purchased or otherwise bartered for Facebook stock from someone with no discernible connection to Facebook, you should probably contact your local authorities. [FOX via The Register]