And it could all rest on a cheque for $3,000.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that New Yorker, Paul Ceglia, is suing over claims he owns 84 percent of Facebook and that a copy of a $3,000 cashier’s check may support his contract claim against the company and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

Bloomberg: Ceglia, 37, said in his June 30 lawsuit that he and Zuckerberg signed a “work for hire” contract in 2003, when the Facebook CEO was an 18-year-old Harvard University freshman. The agreement called for Zuckerberg to do computer coding work and provided for a $1,000 investment by Ceglia in a project called “The Face Book,” in exchange for a 50 percent stake, Ceglia claimed.

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The cancelled cheque is allegedly made out to Zuckerberg and dated three days before the contract was supposedly signed. The additional 34 percent stake claimed in the company was for delays in the launching of the site which the contract also apparently provided for. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told Bloomberg in an e-mail, “We have never disputed that Mark did some work for Ceglia,”  “Everything else asserted by the plaintiff is false and his lawsuit is frivolous, if not outright fraudulent.”

It’s not the first case to be brought against Zuckerberg and Facebook. American blue-bloods, the Winklevoss brothers found fame after they too launched a claim. They alleged founder Mark Zuckerberg broke an oral contract for them to build the Facebook site, copied their idea, and illegally used source code intended for the website after they asked him to do programming for them. The parties reached a confidential settlement agreement in February 2008. (BankR)

Which didn’t stay confidential for long after their lawyers, Quinn Emanuel, accidentally disclosed in a marketing brochure that the dispute was settled in 2008 for $65 million in cash and Facebook shares. A drop in the ocean compared to Facebook’s $11.5 billion estimated value (at that time) but a nice nest egg for when they finally decide to stop being students.