Facebook IPO’s Youngest Victim: 11-Year-Old Investor Wants His Money Back

A fifth-grade victim of last Friday's technical glitches does not ‘like’ how NASDAQ handled Facebook's IPO.

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Reuters

Facebook shares sank on Monday in the first day of trading without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down 25 percent from where they were Friday afternoon

Sam Lesser isn’t old enough to go on Facebook without his parents’ help. But he may be the youngest victim yet of the social networking site’s turbulent IPO.

Lesser, an 11-year-old investor and business prodigy, tried to buy 300 shares of Facebook stock during the company’s initial public offering last week with more than $10,000 saved up from a small company he set up selling skateboards and bracelets.

(MORE: 7 Reasons Facebook Flopped)

But like countless other investors, he still doesn’t know if his order has been filled, due to the numerous glitches that plagued Facebook’s first day of trading on the NASDAQ. He has now been waiting for four days since he first tried to buy the shares, and his attempts to cancel the order have been stymied. “We’ve spoken with three senior traders [at brokerage firm Fidelity] and nobody seems to have any answers,”  Lesser’s mom told the New York Post. ““We feel misguided and misled.”

“They are holding my money hostage,” Lesser said. “It’s really disappointing, because we could have made money on this.”

The fact that Lesser was going to give a cut of his profit to Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong cancer charity is enough to make us want to switch to  Google+.

But don’t worry too much about the boy; Lesser should be fine, considering the undisclosed value of his stake in Apple Computer Inc., which he bought when he was five. Apple stock has surged as much as 800% since then.

MORE: Facebook, Wall Street Banks Sued Over Pre-IPO Financial Forecasts