5 ways the Facebook twins can blow their $160 million
Pity the plight of the Winklevii. They'll have to settle on being tall, handsome and only filthy rich. For most people, that would be a welcome fate but identical twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, - along with college business partner Divya Narendra - thought they had a good shot at becoming insanely rich.
The trio had long claimed that Mark Zuckerberg stole the original idea for Facebook from a company they began while at Harvard. After suing Facebook, they signed off on a settlement for a not-so-shabby $65 million cash-and-stock deal three years ago. But they since had second thoughts after learning about jaw-dropping valuation estimates that Facebook did not disclose prior to the settlement. (Facebook's value was recently estimated at roughly $50 billion.)Today's decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left in place a lower court decision that left the original agreement in place and effectively killed off the twins' hopes to reopen the litigation. Given the appreciation in Facebook's value, their original claim is worth around $160 million. Not shabby, though the twins and Narendra had a much different number in mind. At this point, they are probably not in the mood, but when the cloud lifts, we have a few suggestions on how they might ease their sorrows.
