Stephen Green's commercial real estate empire has been hard hit by the credit crisis—just yesterday, the company announced it planned to cut its fourth-quarter dividend—but the implosion of Lehman Brothers may end up putting an extra $21 million in the coffers of his company, SL Green. Last week, SL Green filed suit against Lehman's commercial banking arm for failing to provide his firm with a loan after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Doesn't compute? Allow us to explain.

We got our hands on Angel At The Fence, Herman Rosenblat's fabricated book about a little girl who threw apples over a concentration camp fence. It's as hesitant as you might expect.

It looks like Maimon Kirschenbaum didn't make any plans to take time off for Hanukkah. The lawyer famous for filing suit against just about every other restaurant in town for underpaying employees has picked the Japanese sushi chain Haru (which, in turn, is owned by Benihana Inc.) as his latest target. According to a complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court on behalf of former Haru waiter Jin-Yi Hong (as well as any other Haru employees who have yet to come forward, naturally), Kirschenbaum argues that the restaurant failed to pay its waiters minimum wage, withheld overtime pay, and forced them to share tips with managers. Haru is in fine company, of course: Kirschenbaum's previous targets have included Nobu, Jean Georges, Bouley, BondSt, Balthazar, BLT Steak, BLT Prime, and BLT Fish. The details of his latest legal offensive after the jump!

We didn't have much success last week getting one of our operatives past Bernie Madoff's doorman, and we really didn't have any interest in trekking to Greenwich to pay a visit to our second favorite villain in the saga, Walter Noel. But could we at least get Walter or his wife Monica on the phone? Ask and ye shall receive. After calling half a dozen numbers and getting nowhere at Walter's office (voicemail), his house in Greenwich (the maid picked up), the Noel home in Southampton (was it one of his infamous daughters who picked up?), and the Noel's apartment on Park Avenue, we finally got a hold of Mrs. Noel herself. You can view the video above to see how it went down. But we're guessing you're going to come to the same conclusion we did: Monica does not sound like a very happy woman these days.

The Loews Corporation, the vast conglomerate controlled by the billionaire Tisch family, appears to be holding up pretty well amid the economic downturn. But that doesn't mean company chief James Tisch doesn't have other things to keep him up at night. Tisch and his wife Merryl have been slapped with a lawsuit by the couple's former butler and chauffeur, who alleges the couple failed to pay him the salary and benefits he was promised and denied him overtime pay as required by law. The ex-employee, a man named Miroslaw Drabik, claims he worked for the Tisches as a butler, chauffeur and caretaker of the couple's summer home from October 2007 through May 2008 and regularly put in 40 hours a week on the job. But in his suit in US District Court, Drabik alleges he never received the pay he was owed in accordance with state and federal labor laws. Drabik is now asking a court to award him an unspecified amount in back wages as well as punitive damages. After the jump, you can peruse the full suit by the Tisch's embittered ex-butler.

It's not all bad news for the folks defrauded by Bernie Madoff. In addition to his handful of homes in Manhattan, Montauk, and Palm Beach, it's likely Madoff's 50 percent stake in this $24 million Embaer Legacy jet will eventually be distributed to the people he cheated as part of his elaborate scheme. The plane, which is based at Long Island's Republic Airport and is just a year old, was purchased by Madoff and real estate developer Edward Blumenfeld, who revealed last week he'd been "invested heavily" in Madoff and had teamed up with him to build a shopping complex in East Harlem. The two, it turns out, also went on family vacations together, which probably explains why they got together to buy the plane. (It's one of two planes that Madoff used on a regular basis: He's also a Netjets customer and is listed as a fractional owner of a Cessna 750 alongside hedge fund billionaire Phil Falcone and Richard Kinder, the former president of Enron.) It's the plane that Madoff co-owns with Blumenthal, though, that you can take for a spin, if you're interested. A company called Talon Air is still leasing Air Bernie, so if you're looking to take 12 friends on a trip—or you just want to see what Bernie used to traipse around the world and rope in new investors—here you go.

The voicemail message at Charlotte Ronson's apartment.

Today may be Dan Loeb's 47th birthday, but the billionaire hedge fund manager didn't take the day off work to hang out at his mansion in East Hampton or tool around his $45 million apartment at 15 Central Park West. Did he turn up at the office today? Did the Loebs go on vacation? We have no clue, but we're pleased to report that despite the market losses he's sustained recently (and that little issue with his Gulfstream jet), he still has an "estate manager" on the payroll. Comforting news in these troubled times! We would recommend, however, that the Loebs consider upgrading the home answering machine at their Hamptons house. That thing sounds dreadful. [Cityfile voicemails]

Scott Conant and Chris Cannon used to be partners in a pair of highly-rated Italian restaurants, Alto and L'Impero. The two decided to go their separate ways in early 2007 (Conant now oversees the meatpacking district restaurant Scarpetta), and while their split may have appeared amicable at first, things devolved over the summer when Conant directed some tough words at Cannon in the pages of New York Restaurant Insider and even suggested his former partner was incompetent. "Something tells us this won't be the last time hard words come out," New York's Grub Street surmised at the time. You can say that again. Last week Conant filed a suit against Cannon in New York Supreme Court, alleging that Cannon has failed to pay him $104,440.67 in deferred compensation. Cannon, for his part, is now countersuing, arguing that Conant violated the terms of his contract as well as defamed him in the New York Restaurant Insider interview, a violation, he says, of the "non-disparaging remarks" provision in the separation agreement they signed in 2007. After the jump, all the salacious details contained in the suit.

Steve Feinberg is the elusive founder of Cerberus Capital, the private equity giant that paid $7.4 billion to acquire 80 percent of Chrysler in 2007. For years Feinberg has done his very best to remain in the shadows: Few photos of him have been published—the ones that have typically been outdated or grainy—and he almost never speaks with the press, preferring to leave those duties to the firm's chairman, former Treasury Secretary John Snow. Until now, that is. Feinberg headed to Washington on Friday to participate in negotiations over the auto industry bailout and soon found himself confronted by reporters on the scene. "When other reporters figured out it was Feinberg—who has rarely been photographed in 20 years on Wall Street—photographers and TV crews swarmed him," reports the Detroit News. A photographer for the AP managed to snap a pic of the elusive billionaire (above) before "he and the other Cerberus executives fled to a tiny room in the Capitol basement." Nice to see one of the most powerful men in finance (and one of the country's most prolific Republican fundraisers) come out of the shadows, isn't it? In honor of his outing, we're pleased to share a couple of other photos of the notoriously secretive billionaire. After the jump, photos of Feinberg holding up his prey from a hunting trip last winter.

There was a bit of good news last week for Stan O'Neal, the former Merrill Lynch CEO who was ousted last year: It was reported that O'Neal was "poised to make a reappearance on Wall Street" with a new job at a hedge fund called Vision Capital Advisors. But there was another, less positive development for O'Neal last week as well. On Friday, O'Neal handed over full ownership of his duplex co-op at 941 Park Avenue to his wife, Nancy Garvey, a property worth as much as $20 million. Why the transfer? O'Neal has been named as a defendant in a series of class-action lawsuits against Merrill, which have accused him of misleading investors about the firm's exposure to risky mortgage investments; moving assets out of his name could be a way to shield them in the event a court eventually awards damages. But the move could also suggest that the couple is in the process of dividing up their assets as part of a divorce proceeding. We'll let you know if we hear more. In the meantime, the apartment transfer document is below.

Given the lengths to which prominent New Yorkers go to control their public profiles, you'd think they would have purchased their domain names by now. It's a $4 investment, which we're pretty sure billionaires like Jonathan Tisch, Steve Feinberg or Edgar Bronfman Jr. can afford, even if this is the greatest depression ever. After all, four bucks doesn't even buy you a glass of wine at a Jeffrey Chodorow restaurant or Noah Tepperberg-owned club. Or a square inch of real estate controlled by Jerry Speyer. Or a square inch of canvas at one of Larry Gagosian's galleries. As you may have read, we've been collecting names over the past few months. It's a bonus for you: Now you just need to go, say, annehearst.com or charlesgwathmey.com or davidremnick.com to get directly to their profiles—no pesky searching involved! We've accumulated more than 100 names so far. If you're interested, you can peruse an incomplete list after the jump.

Citigroup has had a rough time recently. But the bank wouldn't want all the grim news to discourage the bright-eyed college students who signed on to join Citi's investment banking analyst class this May, would it? Of course not! Above you'll find the warm, fuzzy e-card the bank sent to its new recruits this week, which was accompanied by animated snowflakes. One thing it didn't come with, unfortunately: a guarantee that Citigroup will still exist by the time graduation rolls around.

If the competition to close Manhattan's next mega apartment sale is heating up as the Observer's Max Abelson suggests, then Corcoran's Joan Kaplan looks like she's hoping to be a contender. The price of Lionel Pincus' 7,000-square-foot Pierre duplex, which has been on and off the market for more than a year, was just dropped from $50 million to a much more modest $43 million. The price cut comes on the heels of a recent court decision, which gave Pincus's sons, Henry and Matthew, the right to sell the duplex over the objections of Princess Firyal of Jordan, Pincus's former girlfriend. (Pincus was deemed mentally and physically incompetent in 2006.) The reduction also comes a week after it was reported that Pincus now owes over $10 million in property liens. A floorplan of the newly-discounted 30th and 31st-floor duplex is after the jump.

Now that Obama has been elected, a tipster inside a PR firm tells us, clients are demanding "an increased number of African Americans added to the guest list" at their holiday parties. In the spirit of hope! The email can't really be "verified," but appears genuine and is just too important not to share. This firm has even assembled an official internal "Diversified Holiday Guest List," in which they rank the top 10 acceptable black socialite attendees, in order of desirability. Uh... yes we can? After the jump, meet the fashion world's ten favorite African-Americans for Obama-era parties. Jesus christ:

The culmination of our dedicated coverage of The Reader — from Rudin/Weinstein blow-ups to Oscar prognoses to its sexual audacity — arrived this weekend when director Stephen Daldry phoned Defamer HQ. "Sorry, I overslept," he said in his dignified brogue — a forgivable lapse under the circumstances, with his Kate Winslet film following his Billy Elliot stage adaptation by mere weeks on his late-'08 calendar. Nevertheless, we got him properly caffeinated and settled in for a rousing installment of Five Questions (plus one, just for appropriate awards-season breadth):

We've reported on a number of companies (Citigroup, Travelers, Bristol-Myers) that have been looking to unload their expensive corporate jets in recent weeks as the U.S. heads into a deep recession. Dan Loeb, the prickly hedge fund manager best known for castigating CEOs for their profligate spending, demonstrates another path to reducing costs in these challenging economic times: He's renting his plane out to other people. Yes, for $5,800 an hour, you can take 12 of your closest friends for a ride on Loeb's Gulfstream IV-SP, a fact you'll be reminded of every time you look out of the window since the "TP" stamped on the tail reflects the name of his hedge fund, Third Point. (You can contact Key Air if you're interesting in making a reservation.) After the jump, a few photos of the interior and the creamy leather seats where Loeb sits in front of his laptop and drafts those vicious letters of his.

The New York Daily News has trailed the Post's Page Six in the New York gossip wars for a long time. Now the paper is blowing up its gossip columns and starting over. Two major changes went down today. First, husband and wife gossip team Rush & Molloy announced this morning that they'll be moving from a daily column to a Sunday-only schedule, after more than 13 years. Second—and more dramatic—we hear that Jo Piazza, who wrote the paper's Full Disclosure column, has resigned.

Getting rid of your fancy jets is the trend du jour in corporate America, haven't you heard? Well, here's one more company you can add to the list of Fortune 100 companies cutting back on the lavish perks afforded to senior executives: Bristol-Myers Squibb has put two helicopters and a Gulfstream jet on the market. Best of all? They match! (The color scheme is "Matterhorn white with Las Vegas gold and Flight blue accent stripes," in case you're curious.) It's comforting to hear that Bristol-Myers' CEO has never had to worry about parking the jet next to the helicopters and having them clash, and if you're in the market for a new fleet of aircraft, picking up a matching set will save you on a costly paint job. And it might just be the ideal option if you happen to be a Notre Dame fan.

The 850 layoffs at Viacom today—including hundreds at MTV—are claiming the livelihoods of tons of hardworking people who did their jobs well without ever receiving fame and fortune. And just like when a jumbo jet crashes with hundreds of souls aboard, the first question is: "Were any celebrities involved?" You know you were thinking that, you heartless swine. Well (according to an unconfirmed rumor from an inside tipster), your third-favorite MTV correspondent-for-life, John Norris, was laid off today. After the jump, we've got other reports from the Viacom scene.