Normal tech support phone call: "Press 1 for help with e-mail. Press 2 to have your password reset."

Madoff tech support phone call: "Hello, how can I help you dummy up some trading records today?"

The investigation of Bernie Madoff's fraudulent financial empire is leading to more arrests. Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers employed by the Ponzi schemer, were arrested by the FBI on Friday morning. The charges include conspiracy for falsifying books and records. They are accused of doing the deed for the boss and accepting hush money -- in the form of 25% raises and net bonuses of $60,000 -- to keep the scam afloat.

Finally, the federal government has accepted an offer from Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis. Earlier this year, the feds turned down his request for bailout money, but the filmmaker entrepreneur executive soft-core porn guru had better luck with the judiciary branch. His deal to get out of jail came through.

U.S. District Judge S. James Otero accepted a plea agreement that Francis reached with prosecutors. It will put him on probation for the next year for filing false income tax returns. He was also sentenced to time served -- 301 days, but that's all in the past. He also has to pay restitution of $250,000.

All it takes is a little patience. F. Scott Yeager, a former Enron executive, got some good news from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which ruled that it wouldn't revisit his case. So, he no longer has criminal charges related to financial fraud hanging over him. Yeager has been acquitted on all counts. This follows a June ruling by the Supreme Court, which tossed a previous 5th Circuit Court ruling that could have resulted in a new trial.

The ruling said, "Today, ... it is clear under our initial ... analysis the jury made a finding in acquitting Yeager that precludes prosecution on insider trading and money laundering." Samuel Buffone, who was one of Yeager's attorneys, stated that his client shouldn't have been indicted to begin with and didn't do anything wrong. It has taken them seven years to get to this point.

Yeager landed in hot water because he sold stock in Enron for more than $54 million before it began the plunge that would ultimately end with its bankruptcy in 2001. He faced 125 counts, was acquitted of five (four for wire fraud and one for conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud) and wound up with a hung jury for the remaining 120, which included insider trading and money laundering. He was later indicted again on 13 counts of insider trading and money laundering.

Even with the ringleader in jail, the pursuit of Bernie Madoff doesn't seem to be finished. Sunday night, the trustee who's winding down the Madoff company said on 60 Minutes that Madoff's two sons (Mark and Andrew), brother (Peter) and niece (Shana) will be slapped with a $198 million suit. They are alleged to have known about the Ponzi scheme, according to the trustee, Irving Picard and his chief counsel, David Sheehan.

Sheehan and Picard are also working under the assumption that there is still some money hidden, quite a lot of it, in fact. Picard told the show, "We'd assume it's millions and millions of dollars." Yet, this probably wouldn't help with the task in front of them.

Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) is being sued by a Muslim teenager who wanted to work at an Abercrombie Kids store in Oklahoma's Woodland Hills Mall. When she applied in June 2008, Samantha Elauf was told that the hijab she wears is inconsistent with Abercrombie's "Look Policy." So, the 17-year-old took her concerns to U.S. District Court on Wednesday, where a lawsuit was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

A spokeswoman for the retailer wouldn't comment on the lawsuit but did indicate that the store has a strong policy around equal employment opportunity and that it accommodates religious practices "when possible."

Across the country, college classes are starting. In each of these classrooms, students are struggling with calculus, trudging through Candide, and wondering just what the hell they're going to do with their degrees upon graduation. The last of these is characteristic of every college student, especially those of us, with the foresight fortitude recklessness zeal to major in liberal arts fields (in my case, Philosophy).

The anxiety is a bit higher this year, given a high rate of unemployment, the likelihood of a "jobless recovery" and the fact that it could take years for destroyed value to be recovered.

The war between Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) is becoming as fierce as the fight between the two monsters in the classic Japanese flick War of the Gargantuas (don't tell me you don't remember that one!).

This time, the conflict is over the duo's respective sports drinks. According to Bloomberg, PepsiCo believes that Coke has been promoting its Powerade beverage by issuing false claims against PepsiCo's Gatorade.

Seriously, doesn't Citigroup (NYSE: C) have bigger fish to fry? Yesterday, the company released plans for using $36.5 billion of the $45 billion it received from the government - a majority of which will go to residential mortgage lending. This is a good thing, especially in light of questions surfacing about the company's $400 million sponsorship of the New York Mets' new digs (will they or won't they sponsor the stadium ... sure looks like they will).

It's been the key question for Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN): Deal or no deal?

Now we know. This week, the company reached an agreement with its private equity sponsor, Apollo Management, to end its $6.5 billion buyout transaction.

For the past six months, the parties have been embroiled in heated litigation with Huntsman getting the edge as the Delaware court ruled that Apollo had to use best efforts to close the deal . As a result, Apollo's settlement is not cheap. The fees come to about $1 billion.

Although, it's a good deal for both parties. Apollo could have lost even more money if the merger agreement had been enforced. As seen with the collapse of the BCE (NYSE: BCE) deal, there is no appetite for multi-billion-dollar deals. And since Huntsman is in a highly cyclical business – specialty chemicals -- it would have likely made it difficult to justify a buyout.

The dispute is far from over, though. Huntsman is still pursuing a lawsuit with its bankers -- Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank -- on the deal. In other words, Huntsman may even snag even more money from the broken deal.

Still, Wall Street isn't too thrilled. In today's session, Huntsman's shares are down 44% to $3.27 by midday trading.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Streetsmart Guide to Short Selling: Techniques the Pros Use to Profit in Any Market. He is also the founder of BizEquity, a valuation website.

Given the continued deterioration in the financial markets and mortgage industry, it seems likely that Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) badly overpaid for Countrywide Financial -- if the company's equity was worth anything at all.

This latest bit of news won't help. Attorneys general offices in California and Illinois have negotiated a settlement with the lender that will require Countrywide to modify terms on tens of thousands of loans. The settlement will offer strapped California borrowers $3.5 billion in relief, and if all 50 states sign on the total price could soar as high as $8.7 billion, according to the Illinois Attorney General's office. So far, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Washington have joined Illinois and California in the deal.

In a statement, California Attorney General Jerry Brown Jr. said that "Countrywide's lending practices turned the American dream into a nightmare for tens of thousands of families by putting them into loans they couldn't understand and ultimately couldn't afford."

Of course, Bank of America knew going into the deal that it would have billions in litigation expenses to deal with but the downward spiraling of the economy has given CEO Ken Lewis a lot less margin for error. There are still shareholder class-action lawsuits and piles of consumer litigation to be sorted through, and, at a minimum, he has to be wishing he'd saved his ammunition to acquire cheaper assets in the midst of the carnage.

Long-term, it seems doubtful to me that the Countrywide Financial brand has any value at all. Why would anyone go to the poster child for the biggest real estate meltdown in history for a loan?

If the current rash of courtroom events surrounding Victoria's Secret is what CEO Sharen Turney had in mind when she indicated that the company might have become "too sexy", I think there may be trouble in store for that flagship name of Limited Brands Inc. (NYSE: LTD). I don't know about you, but I find courtroom litigation anything but sexy. Unless of course, we're talking about the assistant district attorneys they cast for Law and Order.

First, Victoria's Secret pulled an 'Atomic Wedgie" on Kentucky couple, Victor and Cathy Moseley, by gaining a court order to block the couple from using a truncated version of The Victoria's Secret name. It's no big deal really because it was fairly obvious that the names "Victor's Secret" and "Victor's Little Secret" were pretty flagrant abuses of a trademarked name which deserves secure protection. The one little triumph which came out of that decade-long legal tussle was that the court determined that plaintiffs in trademark infringement cases do not need to show that the infringement actually cost them money, as revealed in a decidedly not sexy Associated Press news blurb.

Next, we find out that Juicy Couture has grabbed Victoria's Secret by the seat of the pants, regarding alleged product marketing infringement. It seems that Juicy thinks that Vicky has infringed on various aspects of packaging, color schemes and logo placement, as explained by blogger Bruce Watson. Personally, I haven't analyzed the claimed offenses. I'll leave that to the courts. I do however find the whole thing to be a bit blown out of proportion -- and very un-sexy.

Shares of radio broadcaster Clear Channel Communications Inc. (NYSE: CCU) were slightly up in early trading after the company posted higher first-quarter profit boosted in part by gains in its outdoor advertising unit. Though, the company was not able to beat analysts' predictions as the weak economy put pressure on the overall advertising market.

Clear Channel Communications announced that its quarterly profit surged to $799.7 million, or $1.61 per share. The income figures were definitely something to cheer about. During its first quarter last year, the company had net income of $102.2 million or 21 cents per share. Excluding one-time items, earnings for the quarter would have been $0.19 per share. Analysts' forecast (which typically exclude one-time items) was for $0.21 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

The media and advertising display company also said that quarterly revenue rose 3.9% to $1.56 billion, compared with $1.51 billion reported in the same period a year ago, helped by favorable foreign exchange rates; excluding the effect of the week dollar, revenue rose only 1%. Analysts had been expecting to see slower sales of $1.53 billion.

I just finished reading a lively little blog piece furnished by The New York Times, City Room. It would seem that the cute Green NYC logo has come under scrutiny of the corporate lawyers at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). Let me just start this by saying it's my opinion that on it's face, this complaint by Apple is stupid. If this sort of thing is what it takes to keep Apple's corporate lawyers busy, the company has far too many law-schooled chair-warmers on payroll.

I won't even dissect the logo issue here for you; I'd pale in comparison to the New York Times piece. What I'd like to do is offer my services to the Apple Inc. legal department as "Solicitor for Stupid Litigation Options." I have prepared a portfolio of possible litigation opportunities. I offer it in lieu of a resume.

First, Apple should file suit against the writers of the Bible. How dare those scribes make the apple to appear such a nefarious fruit. Wasn't Eve told that someday the apple would be a symbol of universal knowledge? Umm wait, I think God did tell her that. So that means we could argue that she acted with malice of intent when she asked Adam to take a bite from the future corporate logo. However, she might then file a counterclaim against Apple, citing her first precedent use of the bitten fruit symbol. We'll have to find mitigating circumstances.

In what may end up being a net positive for eBay, albeit possibly an expensive one, a settlement has been reached in the litigation over patent infringement between eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) and MercExchange. Financial figures of the settlement have not been disclosed, but a report from Computerworld indicates that eBay shall purchase the three patents which were the subject of the litigation, as well as a number of other related technologies and developments.

Mike Jacobson, eBay senior vice president and general counsel, was quoted by Computerworld as stating: "In addition to resolving the litigation, this settlement gives us access to additional intellectual property that will help improve and further secure our marketplaces." MercExchange founder and CEO Thomas Woolston, is quoted in the same report as stating: "It seemed like the right time to put it behind us."

In May of 2003, a jury in the case found eBay guilty of patent infringement and an injunction was sought and granted. However, in reviewing the US Court of Appeals decision, the Supreme Court unanimously derailed the long standing practice of issuing immediate injunctions in cases of intellectual property infringement, insisting that in the future, such injunctions must meet the requirements of a four-factor test.

Back on May 17, 2007, there was another typical multi-billion dollar private equity deal. That is, The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) agreed to pay $81.75 per share -- a total of $7.8 billion -- for Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE: ADS).

In the press release, Chip Schorr, a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, proclaimed: "We are excited about the opportunity to work together with management and with Alliance Data's dedicated employees to help continue to grow the business and further strengthen the company's competitive position."

Well, now the deal is in shambles, with ADS's stock price trading at a lowly $41.40. This week, Blackstone indicated that it is having troubles getting regulatory approval from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC), which wants Blackstone to provide a $400 million backstop of support (in the event there is a problem with the banking segment).