A federal judge has ruled that the SEC could substitute the executor for the estate of Charles Wyly Jr. in an insider trading case against the now-deceased billionaire

In a hearing this week, an attorney representing unsecured creditors who claim they lost $165 million in Scott Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme accused the bankruptcy trustee for Rothstein’s defunct law firm of excessively billing the estate for professional fees and “taking actions that are wasteful.”

Marika Tolz, a former panelist for the U.S. bankruptcy trustee’s program, has been sentenced in Florida state court to nearly seven years for embezzling $550,000 from the estate of three children.

What started off as a straightforward bankruptcy hearing for Howrey on Wednesday turned rocky as the firm’s landlord threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, and a $140 million settlement that had promised a huge contingency fee boost to the estate started unraveling.

Telecom company 360 Networks and a representative of its creditors have settled their claims against the estate of defunct law firm Dreier LLP over millions of dollars the company claimed should have been held in escrow.