Forbes has a cover story on how Steve Jobs got himself in hot water with the SEC over stock options. The magazine is part-owned by former Apple CFO Fred Anderson. Do the math.

Insurers will pay Apple $14 million in a settlement of a suit brought by shareholders against the company's executives. This brings the scandal over backdated options — where company officials changed the date of option grants so that executives like CEO Steve Jobs would have a lower strike price, without accounting for it in the company's books — pretty much to a close after the SEC settled its case against former corporate counsel Nancy Heinen. The $14 million will neatly cover an estimated $8.9 million in attorney fees and expenses. [AP] (Photo by Getty/AFP)

Last Friday, shareholder plaintiffs filed suit against San Jose District Court against Apple CEO Steve Jobs, former CFO Fred Anderson, ex-general counsel Nancy Heinen, and members of the company's board of directors looking to reclaim the $7 billion in lost stock value when the company restated its financials in the wake of a — let's say it — hopelessly boring stock-option scandal that takedown-hungry journalists cared about far more than their readers. Let's be real: If anyone really cared about Jobs's fudging of stock-options grant dates, would it have taken so long to drum up some outraged shareholders? This smells of bored lawyers. The old-news complaint:

The innocent spin being put on top Apple lawyer Don Rosenberg's departure is that he got a better offer from Qualcomm. But Rosenberg, a decidedly gray figure who came to Apple from Big Blue, served as the company's general counsel for less than a year. He filled a post that had been empty for six months after Nancy Heinen left amid a stock-backdating scandal. And Rosenberg's replacement, Dan Cooperman, comes from Oracle, where he worked for Larry Ellison. Ellison, like Jobs, is a famously temperamental founder-CEO. He's also a close friend of Jobs, and used to serve on Apple's board of directors. This all seems quite cozy, and curiously timed. Anyone know the back story here — and why Apple keeps chewing through its top lawyers?