The stunned-looking Oleson after her arrest
Marianne Oleson was charged Wednesday with multiple counts of theft and forgery for the sale of fake Facebook stock. The Oshkosh, WI resident conned four men out of thousands of dollars, including Randy Stafford, a construction worker who did concrete work on Oleson’s house worth $18,000. After she couldn’t pay for the work, Marianne told him she had just invested a million dollars in Facebook stock and would be willing to pay him with some of her shares. Stafford wound up giving her another $10,000 in cash to buy additional shares. “I’m interested in my options and investments so you don’t have to work as hard and make it a lot easier money for my kids and family,” Stafford said. He went to police when he realized something didn’t seem quite right about the transaction.
Another victim was a 66-year-od man from Oshkosh, who purchased $10,000 worth of Oleson’s fake stock certificates with the understanding he’d receive them by mail. Two other men paid $6,600 and $3,300 respectively for the fraudulent stocks. Oleson claimed her daughter was good friends with the Facebook founder’s girlfriend, according to the Oshkosh Northwestern.
Despite Facebook’s valuation in a private market auction reaching $94 billion after Wednesday’s filing for an IPO, the IPO isn’t expected until some time in May. It remains to be seen if Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriends will be handing out stock at that time.
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