By Ross Todd, From The Recorder

SAN FRANCISCO — Famed investment advisor Charles Schwab filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing a Beverly Hills law firm and its client of creating a libelous website as a part of an alleged extortion plot aimed at him and his son.

Both Schwab and his son Michael filed complaints in San Francisco Superior Court accusing Steiner & Libo, partner Leonard Steiner, and client Nicholas Behunin with libel for their roles in publishing chuck-you.com, a website that claims the Schwabs sought to do business with the family of late Indonesian dictator Suharto.

Michael Schwab’s complaint also includes claims of slander and false light publicity based on allegations the defendants seeded a false and defamatory story by Huffington Post blogger Bruce Fein.

Behunin and Michael Schwab, former surfing buddies, have sued each other in state court over soured business dealings. The Schwabs’ lawyers allege that Steiner helped Behunin create chuck-you.com in August through a company that allows individuals to register domain names without revealing their identity.

Riffing on Charles Schwab’s famous marketing slogan “Ask Chuck,” the site’s homepage posed questions such as “Looking to launder money overseas? Chuck can help!” and “Looking to profit from a brutal dictator? Ask Chuck,” the complaint states.

“The website’s clear objective was, and is, to publicly embarrass and shame Schwab and then to leverage that public embarrassment into litigation advantage in Behunin’s lawsuit,” Charles Schwab’s lawyers at Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis stated in their complaint. “Schwab—an investor and businessman with an outstanding reputation earned over the course of several decades—does not help investors to ‘profit from a brutal dictator’ or ‘launder money overseas’ ” as claimed on the website, they wrote.

According to Charles Schwab’s complaint, his lawyers called Steiner to advise him about the site early this month and Steiner denied any knowledge of it. Soon thereafter, however, the complaint says Steiner and his firm showed up as the domain name’s registrant and “Steiner & Libo. All Rights Reserved” appeared at the bottom of the website’s pages. After Schwab’s counsel sent a letter to Steiner demanding the site be taken down and replaced with a public apology, Behunin’s name replaced the firm’s name on the domain registry and the web pages, according to the complaint. The bottom of the site now reads: “N. Behunin. All Rights Reserved.”

“The only reason to create these fraudulent websites was to besmirch the good name and reputation of Charles R. Schwab and his son Michael,” said Robert Moore of Allen Matkins in a prepared statement. “Not one claim on the landing page of the site is true or correct and the guilty parties were aware of that prior to making the defamatory statements.”

Steiner forwarded a call for comment along to his client Behunin. “Everything on that site, I can substantiate. So I don’t think that any of it is libelous,” Behunin said in a phone interview Thursday.

“First off my lawyer has no involvement in the creation of the website and him being named in the lawsuit is complete B.S.,” Behunin said. Behunin said the Schwabs intentionally targeted his lawyer in hopes of conflicting him out of other pending litigation between the parties.

“Any resources that I have to expend towards defamation lawsuits is less resources I have to, one, convey the true Charles Schwab and, two, to fight my own case,” he said.

IMAGE: Charles Schwab

For more on this story go to: http://www.therecorder.com/id=1202675151357/Charles-Schwab-Sues-LA-Law-Firm-Over-Disparaging-Website#ixzz3Hqb0O6MQ