Back in U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday for a hearing related to securities fraud charges, the usually-outspoken Martin Shkreli was uncharacteristically subdued. This may have been because his new lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, would only take him as a client if he stopped running his mouth.

According to court documents filed by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn on Thursday, Martin Shkreli, the price-gounging capitalist super-villain (who may not actually have been a very good business man or criminal), is worth at least $45 million—which explains how he could afford not only to secure $5 million bond but also to buy the $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

Shawn Chapman Holley has announced she'll no longer be serving as Lindsay Lohan's defense attorney. (Apparently LiLo replaced her with this lady, "who was just admitted to the bar in November," per TMZ.) Also, LiLo may soon lose another lawsuit.

Remind us not to get in a fight with E-Trade: The company is responding to a defamation suit from Lindsay Lohan with a hundred-page document "detailing Lohan's drug abuse, brawls and DWI busts," just to prove she lives in California.

Stupid lawsuits are filed every day, and Lindsay Lohan does stupid things every day. But is she really behind the E*Trade lawsuit that bears her name?

Lindsay Lohan has gone off the deep end of paranoid narcissism. A Super Bowl ad featuring talking babies that refers to a "milkaholic" named "Lindsay" is about her, she says, and she's suing for $100M.

The last time I saw the the Pets.com sock puppet was during an E-Trade Super Bowl commercial. In it, a chimp rides a horse through a postapocalyptic, postbubble Silicon Valley. At the end of the 30-second spot, a wrecking ball crashes through an office building, and the puppet flies out, landing dusty and ragged at the chimp's feet. The chimp picks up the puppet and a tear rolls down his face, as he mourns a tarnished symbol of '90s exuberance. But watching today's financial news, I'm thinking the chimp should have burned the little sucker. Because then BarNone — a subprime lender, of course — wouldn't have been able to purchase the rights to the puppet for $125,000 and keep its wretched curse alive. "Everybody deserves a second chance," my foot.

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.

Despite turning into a bank, E*Trade retains large offices in the Bay Area. Perhaps set to become smaller. The online broker, embroiled in the market's mortgage mess, missed Wall Street's expectations for first-quarter earnings. [E*Trade]

E-Trade named its chairman, former JPMorgan Chase executive Donald Layton, as its new CEO today. Layton joined E-Trade as its chairman in November, after hedge fund Citadel invested $1.75 billion in the company. E-Trade lost big money investing in mortgage-backed securities. [WSJ]

While none of these can match the drama of Apple's 1984 ad — or the actual football game — a few of this year's crop of tech ads made me laugh. Check out these clips from Dell, GoDaddy.com, Cars.com, CareerBuilder, E-Trade and more.

Behold the best tech ad in Super Bowl history: Apple's "1984" ad, which cost $1.6 million to make and run, and only aired nationally once. The following nine ads, while perhaps not as iconic, are all fascinating in how they seek to make the mysteries of tech compelling to the masses.

Faced with its own little chunk of the subprime mortgage crisis, E-Trade, one of the Internet's oldest brokerage firms, announced today it will take a $2.55 billion cash infusion from Citadel Investment Group. The bailout comes after E-Trade announced $197 million in pretax writedowns on its portfolio of securities and said it set aside another $237.8 million in loan-loss provisions, according to the WSJ. But fret not, this is good news. Citadel made its bet because it feels the mortgage market is at a low point and that E-Trade's mortgage securities retain their intrinsic value. It's a bet that things will go back to normal. No coal in your stockings after all, E-Traders!