Winklevoss Sued for Piece of its $65M Facebook Settlement Money

Wayne Chang is suing Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss–who are suing Mark Zuckerberg–for cutting him out of their Facebook/ConnectU settlement.

On Thursday we found out that the Winklevoss twins have opened a new suit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook–not because they didn’t get the recognition they wanted (hey, if you ask me, a $65 million settlement smells like at least some sort of guilt), but because they want more money.

Basically, the Winklevoss twins sued Zuckerberg/Facebook back in 2008 for cutting them out of the phenomenon that is Facebook, and for using code that Zuckerberg originally wrote for the Winklevoss’ project, social network ConnectU. Zuckerberg settled with a payout of $65 million, and now the Winklevoss twins think that this measly sum is unfair–because they allege that Zuckerberg misrepresented Facebook’s true value.

So naturally, they want more.

Well, according to Silicon Alley Insider, there’s another player: Wayne Chang. Chang is suing the Winklevoss twins for, well, doing the exact same thing to him, that Zuckerberg did to them. Chang says that his Web development company merged with the Winklevoss’ ConnectU to form a new company: The Winklevoss Chang Group (WCG).

Thus, Chang states that, since Facebook was an asset of ConnectU, it was also an asset of WCG. In other words, the Winklevoss twins should have shared their $65 million payout with Chang.

Maybe that’s why the twins need more money from Zuckerberg?

Images of the court documents (the suit was filed last year), uploaded to Silicon Alley Insider, even show an instant messaging conversation between Chang and Cameron Winklevoss.

This November 2004 instant message exchange shows that “cwinklevoss” said:

cwinklevoss: would u be interested in a deal structured as follows

cwinklevoss: CU gives you x part of our company, say 15% for the time being contingent on the completion of alicensing deal and upgrade to decentralized software

It’s not a real tech-mogul lawsuit until you have instant messaging conversations in the court documents.

So here it is: the Winklevoss twins are suing Zuckerberg for stealing their idea. Wayne Chang is suing the Zuckerberg twins for merging with his company and then running off with the profits. And Zuckerberg is sitting on his $6.9 billion (of which he has pledged to give at least half to charity) and laughing at the poor millionaires squabbling over cash.

Follow Sarah on Twitter (@geeklil) or at sarahpurewal.wordpress.com