The graffiti artist, who will net $200 million in the Facebook IPO, says he was offered oral sex every day for the rest of his life, in exchange for a $2 million slice of his new wealth.
David Choe gambled on stock, turning down cash, when he painted the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto back in 2005, a decision that will make him an overnight millionaire when the company makes their initial public offering later this spring.
The 35-year-old took a considerable risk when he turned down $60,000 cash for a social networking website that he regarded as a pale imitation of MySpace.
But while most of us would be ecstatic to find ourselves a millionaire 200 times over, the art school drop out says he hates his new found fame and fortune, as it means that ‘more people will bother him’, Good Morning America reported.
Choe said he was at home in bed when he first realised he'd been outed alongside around 1,000 Facebook employees who will become millionaires after the blockbuster $5 billion flotation.
He said: ‘ I got a text from a woman I hadn’t spoken to in five years and she offered me oral sex every day for the rest of my life for $2 million.'
'Just out of the blue. It was out of nowhere and I was like 'What the hell is happening?’'
The anguished artist places more value on his privacy than the money.
He explained: 'I cannot buy my privacy back. Every news organisation in the world is beating down the door trying to get an interview and I'm like 'Oh my God'.
Many of Facebook's employees have made bucket lists with elaborate plans for going into outer space or buying property. But Choe, who served time in jail in Japan, for passing forged cheques and stealing, says the money won’t give him any more opportunities than he has already had.
He said: 'It's going to sound horrible for me to say money is meaningless. But everyone’s like 'What are you going to do now that you have all this money and freedom? ''
'I did everything I wanted to do when I had nothing. I'm still going to do whatever I want, except more people are just going to bother me now.'
Asked why he took stock he told GMA: ‘I like to party. I like to gamble'
Choe, who was born in America to Korean immigrants, paints city scapes, abstract forms and lots of woman calling his art, ‘my therapy’.
The self-declared misfit’s art is now in Facebook offices all over the world, he says. But it wasn't always so warmly received.
Sean Parker at first called it 'schizophrenically distracting' and asked him: 'There's nothing more for you to add to it?'
In 2003 Choe served three months in a Japanese prison for hitting a security guard. While inside he continued to paint, using whatever was to hand, including his own urine and blood, he told GMA
'I would use the soy sauce,' he said. 'And I don't want to be gross, but I would use urine and blood and all these things, and anything that would create any kind of pigment. ... It was the only thing that let me keep my sanity.'
Now success has come his way- a portrait he painted of Obama even hangs in the White House.
Choe sold some of his stock a while ago, but will still have an estimated couple hundred million dollars after the exchange, he said.
'Don't feel sorry for me,' he told Walters. 'This is like a godlike amount of money, where I could actually change the world and do things to help humanity and do good things.
'As an artist, I often wonder what my purpose is or why I do what I do," he said. "So those things will hopefully come into more clarity, or maybe not. I don't know.'
Choe reportedly considered the idea of Facebook ‘ridiculous and pointless’ at the time of his painting, reported the New York Times.
Many ‘advisers’ to the company in its formative years were paid between 0.1 to 0.25 per cent of the company, according to a former employee. This now translates into tens and hundreds of millions.
Choe, of Los Angeles, California, recently went to the new Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park to spray paint a wall, and can be seen in a video getting the help of founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27.
He also did the cover art for Jay-Z and Linkin Park's hit 2004 music album Collision Course and even created a poster of President Barack Obama for the White House, the New York Times reported.
Left-handed Mr Choe told Ion magazine that he developed a 'dirty style' because his left hand would always smudge his work as a child.
The site has 845million active users, and half of them typically visit the site on any given day.
While it may seem that everyone in the English-speaking world has a Facebook account, in fact the site has only penetrated 60 per cent of the market in the U.S. and the UK, and is most popular in Chile, Turkey and Venezuela.
