• It seems another apartment at posh 834 Fifth Avenue is coming on the market. In addition to Broadway producer Hal Prince who listed his duplex last week, billionaire Charles Schwab is reportedly putting his 15th-floor apartment in the building up for sale. The "small" penthouse will be listed with Sotheby's Roger Erickson for $14 million. [NYO]
• Seymour Zises, founder of the investment advisory firm Family Management, and his wife Cathy, have closed on the sale of their five-bedroom apartment at 1016 Fifth Avenue. The second-floor spread, which was listed for $10.95 million when it went into contract back in May, was sold to investor Paul Orlin for $8.9 million. [Cityfile]
• Gail Elliott, the former British model and fashion designer, and her husband, Joe Coffey, have sold their condo at 40 Mercer. The buyers, club owner Bryant Yunker and his wife, paid $3.812 million for the fourth-floor pad. [Cityfile]

Venerable San Francisco financial firm Charles Schwab just took an $85 million hit, writing off some debt it owned in Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. On the Old Money quarter-mile, Montgomery Street, a small electronic ticker from Schwab offers a barometer. After yesterday's 777.68 plunge, the year-to-date number from the Dow Jones index has gone from -17.1 percent when I walked by on Friday to -20.5 percent yesterday afternoon. I've updated the photo from Google Street View to correctly reflect current trends. [San Jose Mercury News]

The Charles Schwab Corporation has predictably named its president, Walt Bettinger, to succeed its eponymous founder as CEO. Bettinger, like Schwab, is a scrappy entrepreneur, or so the canned corporate biography has it; he founded a company at the age of 22, which Schwab later bought. Not mentioned in Bettinger's bio: A court case involving a Walter W. Bettinger II and Laura Bettinger. In 2005, this Walter tried to get a $6,000/mo. child-support payment to Laura reduced, in part because the value of her Schwab account had increased. If that's the same Walt Bettinger, Schwab shareholders should be impressed: He may not have kept the marriage intact, but he successfully retained his ex-wife as a customer.

Plumas Lake, California's Michael Sargent managed to roll a ton of pennies into a five-figure pay day by gaming E-Trade, Charles Schwab and Google Checkout customer verification systems in an ingenious scheme reminiscent of the one perpetrated by characters Peter, Michael and Samir in 1999's cubicle culture classic Office Space. Using aliases, including character names from Office Space director Mike Judge's cartoon King of the Hill, Largent used a script to sign up for new accounts and then collect the few cents used to verify his checking account information. In six months he managed to milk E-Trade and Schwab for over $50,000 according to Wired. And now he's indicted on charges of computer fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud. But while the Secret Service says he bilked Google Checkout for $8,225.29, he's not being indicted on charges related to that part of the plan. Granted, even if he doesn't have to return that money, he'll probably have to spend it on lawyers.

Who's the richest billionaire in the Bay Area? No surprise here: Oracle founder and yachting enthusiast Larry Ellison, is the 14th wealthiest in the world (which must grate on him something fierce) with $25 billion. Trailing him are a trio of Googlers, Larry and Sergey with almost $19 billion each and CEO Eric Schmidt with $6.6 billion. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest billionaire is pegged at $1.5 billion and outgoing eBay CEO Meg Whitman, one of only 99 women on the list, has $1.3 billion. Other local billionaires include Steve Jobs, Charles Schwab and George Lucas. Grab the full list from Forbes.

PAUL BOUTIN — Greetings from Atherton, the billonaire bedroom community hidden between Woodside, Menlo Park and Redwood City. Despite its A-list of high-rolling residents including Google CEO Eric Schmidt and brokerage king Charles Schwab, Atherton keeps such a low profile that many Valley residents still haven't heard of it.