Paul Ceglia, the upstate New Yorker who alleges he’s entitled to half ownership of Facebook, was ordered Wednesday to hand over to the judge overseeing the case documents Facebook says proves he forged the alleged contract showing he was the original investor.

The order comes after Facebook told the court Friday that it had found “smoking gun” evidence in discovery that proved Ceglia had doctored a contract with Mark Zuckerberg — but that Ceglia’s lawyers were claiming confidentiality and attorney-client privilege to keep the evidence from being admitted to the case.

Wired.com revealed on Saturday that Facebook’s lawyers slipped up and accidentally revealed that they claim to have found the “authentic contract” between Zuckerberg and Ceglia, which Facebook has always said involved only Zuckerberg doing a small amount of contract programming for Ceglia’s StreetFax company. Those claims were supposed to be redacted in Facebook’s original filing and were quickly removed from the court’s electronic docket, but Wired obtained a copy(.pdf).

Judge Leslie Foschio of the U.S. District Court in New York City ordered the documents be provided to her by Thursday 4 p.m. Though the order doesn’t specify what’s in those documents, one could safely assume they include the so-called “authentic contract” referred to by Facebook and references to “storage devices” that Facebook says Ceglia is intentionally hiding from them.

Facebook argues that Ceglia is trying to hide the evidence and wants 120 documents put on the “privilege log” to be admitted into the case. It says there are two documents currently protected under attorney-client privilege that are also relevant.

Judge Foschio ordered Ceglia’s lawyers to provide complete copies of items 1-46 on the privilege list that are designated as “confidential” and all documents where Ceglia is claiming attorney client privilege.

The judge will examine the documents “in camera,” meaning on her own without Facebook being allowed to see them.

Ceglia, who has a checkered past that includes fraud, is allegedly now living in Ireland, according to Facebook’s legal filings.

Photo: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Credit: Jon Snyder/Wired.com