A man whose former school friend allegedly created a false Facebook account under his name to spread slurs about his finances and sexuality is pursuing a landmark court case.
The Daily Mail reports Grant Rapheal built an online profile that portrayed Mathew Firsht as a homosexual "looking for whatever I can get" who avoided paying large debts by lying.
Firsht has responded by filing a High Court lawsuit in London claiming libel and misuse of private information.
The profiles were on the internet for over two weeks before Mr Firsht's brother spotted them and they were removed by Facebook administrators.
Rapheal claims strangers who attended a party at his home sneaked off to a spare bedroom to create the fake profile on his computer.
But Firsht's lawyer Lorna Skinner said his case was "simply not tenable", labelling Rapheal a "self-confessed Facebook enthusiast" who has borne a grudge against her client since their friendship soured in 2000.
"The defendant knew all the information in the profiles, and only a very limited number of people would," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.
Firsht's company Applause Store Productions finds audiences for TV and radio shows in London and provides warm-up services for live shows including UK Big Brother.
Facebook has grown rapidly since its inception in 2006 and is the seventh most popular site on the internet, attracting 129.3 million visitors worldwide last month.
In a similar local case, a Melbourne man was forced to publish apologies in two major newspapers last February after spreading defamatory allegations through Facebook.
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