Voskerician’s lawyer says his client wasn’t trying to squeeze anyone.
E-mails from Voskerician show how much he wanted to gain entry to the rarefied realms of Mark Zuckerberg.
In an April 13, 2013, e-mail to Zuckerberg, Voskerician asked to “shake hands” on the deal and begin the introductions.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, First I am happy that I could maintain your privacy by selling you the Hamilton property,” the Romanian-born Voskerician wrote. “Second, I wanted to meet and shake hands for the transaction and discuss your offering of working with you in the future as you stated you have built Facebook on connections that you have with others in Silicon Valley. One of the reasons I went with your offer other than maintaining your privacy was your offering to help me get my homes, development projects, in front of your Facebook employees and build a relationship with you.”
Sustainable Living
Voskerician also asked for a 30-minute meeting with Zuckerberg to discuss a project involving “modern science based sustainable social living” using an an “open source” model akin to Facebook’s “Open Compute Platform.”
E-mails suggest the Zuckerberg team had zero interest.
Makan, the financial advisor, told Zuckerberg’s real estate agent the Facebook chief was unlikely to meet with Voskerician at all.
“But if it means I have to waste 30 min on MZs behalf I would grudgingly do it if you advised this,” he wrote in an April 2013 e-mail.
Voskerician kept nudging, to no avail. By November 2013, Facebook employees were starting to worry he could cause problems. Zuckerberg’s assistant, Andrea Besmehn, looped in the company’s head of executive protection in the event the standoff “escalates from either a security or PR standpoint.”