Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group has an explanation for that lawsuit by Financial Times which accused the private equity giant of sharing an account login and password to the FT website. A Blackstone employee tells the Observer that it was all the fault of the London office and the work of eight renegade employees, and that the staff in New York had "nothing to with it." (Someone ought to tell this to the FT since it argued in court papers that the culprits "worked for Blackstone within the United States.") Also? Blackstone would like the world to know that it actually has 63 paid subscriptions to the Financial Times, which in Steve Schwarzman's preferred unit of measurement, comes out to 31 stone crabs. [NYO]

Bernie Madoff is complicating everything! Steve Simkin, a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss is now suing his ex-wife Laura, demanding that she return the $2.7 million he gave her as part of a divorce settlement in 2006. Why? Because Simkin's money was invested with Madoff, of course, and the settlement was based on the assumption the couple had $5.4 million in their Madoff account. The couple says it took two years to negotiate their divorce the first time around. So you can expect to read a follow-up to this case in the paper in 2011 or so. [NYDN]

Jean Doumanian, the film producer who may be best known for feuding with former business partner Woody Allen several years ago, has a new project in the works. Her production company has acquired the stage and film rights to Mitchell Zuckoff's 2005 book, Ponzi's Scheme, which details the life and times of Charles Ponzi, the charlatan who made off with millions in the 1920s. Naturally, Doumanian thinks the timing is just right for a tale of greed and financial fraud: "The whole ambiance of Boston in the '20s before the Depression has great parallels with what we're seeing today with Madoff and our terrible recession-depression." Presumably she'll have plenty of personal material to draw on, too. When Woody Allen filed suit against her several years ago, he alleged that she and her husband had been providing him with false financial records and had used shady accounting tactics to cheat him out of millions.

Looks like Citigroup's attorneys at Skadden Arps have some more work to do! Last week, the bank slapped Brooklyn's All Citi pawn shop with a lawsuit for allegedly infringing on its trademark. But a reader points out that All Citi isn't the only pawnbroker using the "renowned" Citi name. There's also Citi-Pawn in Davie, Florida. If you work at Skadden and you bump into Ken Plevan in the hallway, please pass along the word. [Previously]

Robert De Niro's Nobu has agreed to pay out $2.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of 200 workers, who sued the sushi chain in 2007 for forcing them to share tips and failing to pay overtime wages. Each plaintiff in the case will receive $3,300, except for four workers who recruited other "victims," who will take home an additional $10,000 apiece. The balance? That will go to Maimon Kirshenbaum, naturally. [NYP]

You'd think Citigroup would have bigger things to worry about these days than paying $1,000-an-hour lawyers to face off against a rinky-dink pawn shop in Brooklyn. Think again. Last week, the banking giant filed suit against All Citi Pawn on Neptune Avenue in Brooklyn for ripping off the bank's name and logo. In court papers, Skadden Arps' Ken Plevan, argued that the pawn shop is "tarnishing the extraordinary reputation of Citi," which he (rather generously) described as "one of the largest and most renowned banking and financial services institutions in the world." The bank is now suing All Citi for trademark infringement, dilution, false designation of origin, and unfair competition. But can a business that is profitable (which we're guessing the pawn shop is) really "dilute the value" of Citigroup when it's the bank—and not the pawn shop—that has reported record losses and had to rely on a government bailout to stay afloat?

After years of freezing out cofounder Eduardo Saverin over a dispute about money, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has deigned to recognize his former Harvard buddy. Why now? Perhaps to derail a forthcoming Facebook tell-all?

Bernie Madoff has a new legal foe to contend with. Jonathan Lee Riches, who is currently in prison in South Carolina for wire fraud, has submitted papers to a judge in which he claims he handed over money to Madoff, but then lost it when Bernie put it in a "Swiss account Ponzi." The best bit: "Riches claims he met Madoff in 2001 via the online dating site eHarmony.com and the two had an intimate relationship." Before you get too alarmed, you may want to keep in mind that this is the same man who sued Michael Vick for $63 billion in 2007 for stealing his pit bulls and using the proceeds to buy missiles from Iran. [Dealbook]

You know we're in a deep recession when even billionaire financiers can't afford to pay for subscriptions to the Financial Times. In what will go down as one of the more bizarre (and unintentionally hilarious) lawsuits we've seen in quite some time, the newspaper filed a lawsuit against Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group on Wednesday for sharing an FT username and password instead of setting up separate accounts for its employees. Yes, an unknown "senior employee" at the colossal private equity firm "authorized the initiation and repeated renewal of an individual, personal subscription to FT.com" and then distributed the login details to company employees so they could all join in on the fun. (The court documents list the username as "theblackstonegroup" and the password as "blackstone," although FT says it has since "disabled the credentials to mitigate damages.")

Ryan Pacifico was just a normal Long Island guy—working in finance, not a homo. Until his boss found out he was a vegetarian, and started calling him a gay vegetarian homo. Not cool, dude.

Not so fast on reserving tickets for that "Thriller" musical. John Landis, the director and co-writer of the original video, is suing to get the thing stopped, claiming that Michael Jackson owes him money.

Legal eagle Rick Kurnit's take on Virgin America's decision to sue a website for its Flight 1549-inspired parody? He's thinking it's all an elaborate publicity stunt. "Virgin America sues [the site] to say they disavow unfair and tasteless advertising while drawing attention to itself at the same time and the fact a competitor had birds fly into their engine." My, that Richard Branson is a devious one, isn't he? [Brandweek]

Virgin is always making those cheeky ads for itself, right? But when a blogger does it in obvious parody style, Virgin sues them. Scrubs.

It may be cold and dreary today, but it's all warm and fuzzy inside the Plaza! Okay, maybe not, but Russian financier Andrei Vavilov and El-Ad Properties have settled their respective lawsuits. (Vavilov, as you may recall, paid $53.5 million for a triplex in the building and then filed suit to get his $10.7 million deposit back; El-Ad countersued shortly thereafter.) Terms of the settlement are confidential, but Vavilov's lawyer says his client is "very pleased with the outcome." Nice to hear someone has something to be happy about today! [City Room]

It's no wonder this unreleased "Speedfit" workout video was banned from YouTube: It's as embarrassing as rumored and contains an incriminating recording of her business manager to boot.

Virgin doesn't have a problem mocking current events as part of its own ad campaigns. (Perhaps you saw Virgin Mobile's Eliot Spitzer-themed ad last year?) But clearly Virgin America isn't quite as happy when other people do it. The company filed a lawsuit against the advertising blog Adrants.com yesterday over a fake ad the site posted on the day Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River. The spoof (left), which appeared below the headline "The Hudson Crash: Just One More Reason to Fly Virgin," was later updated to make it clear the ad was a parody. (It was eventually removed from the site entirely, although you'll find a cached version here.) But that hasn't stopped Virgin from suing Adrants and the site's founders for defamation, trademark infringement and dilution, false designation, and false and deceptive advertising. "Virgin America deplores the fact that anyone would try to take advantage of the crash of flight 1549," the company said in court documents. (Here's looking at you, Ken Cole!) You can take a look at Virgin's full lawsuit after the jump.

Eric Roth has a lot to be thankful about. The award-winning writer of Forrest Gump and Munich, this morning Roth was nominated for an Oscar for his adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The bad news? Whatever money he made from Benjamin Button—or any of his other movies—is long gone. In late December, Roth revealed that he'd lost "all his retirement money" to Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Now Roth has filed suit against Stanley Chais, the LA-based money manager who helped collect an estimated $250 million for Madoff. So if Roth ends up winning on Oscar night and his acceptance speech strikes you as a little overly emotional (or you're just outraged that Button won), you should probably cut him a little slack.

• UBS will make a fourth round of job cuts and is closing several divisions. [BN]
• A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Bank of America for failing to disclose the risks associated with the acquisition of Merrill Lynch. [Reuters]
• More BoA-Merrill trouble: It seems the bank accelerated bonus payments last month so it could hand out the cash before the bank changed hands. [FT]
• The SEC has filed charges against missing hedge funder Arthur Nadal. [NYP]
• Win Bischoff's goodbye email to Citigroup employees. [Deal Journal]
• A record $152 billion was pulled from hedge funds in the fourth quarter. [DB]
• In other bad news, Microsoft is cutting 5,000, Intel is laying off 6,000, and Sony says it lost $2 billion more than expected last year. [WSJ, CNN, BN]

• There were bound to be a few dramatic moments at the inaugural parties last night: Sheryl Crow had an awkward run in with her ex, Kid Rock, in the lobby of Donovan House. John Legend was forced to make a last-minute stop at Bloomingdale's because his girlfriend didn't have a gown. Susan Sarandon got a reporter kicked out an event for daring to ask a question. And Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony showed up so late to the Neighborhood Ball, they almost didn't get in. [P6, WP, Politico]
• One possible explanation for Lopez's late arrival: She was spotted at the Scientology Center in LA yesterday morning, trying to sneak out of the building without being noticed. [NYDN]
• Another headache for John Travolta and Kelly Preston: A politician in the Bahamas may have been part of a plot to extort money from the couple following the death of Jett Travolta. [OK!]

VitaminWater, the drinks with names like "defense," "energy," and "endurance" that Alicia Keys is currently getting $25 million to promote, is basically just sugar and water, according to a nutrition advocacy group bringing a class-action lawsuit against the brand's owner CocaCola. (The "inventor" of VitaminWater, J. Darius Bikoff, sold it to Coke in 2007 for $4 billion.) Consumers are being outrageously misled by the "nonsense" claim that VitaminWater is good for your health, says the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, pointing out that one bottle contains around 33 grams of sugar. "I had no idea," laments lead plaintiff James Koh, "that I was actually getting almost a Coke's worth of sugar and calories." Somewhere, recent spokesmodel Jennifer Aniston is dying of shock while speed dialing her personal trainer.