Irving Picard, the bankruptcy trustee responsible for liquidating Bernie Madoff’s investment firm, dropped one of twelve claims against J. Ezra Merkin, the man who raked in a large chunk of Madoff’s fake profits. The total value of the suit hasn’t changed from $564.6 million, but $279 million of that will have to come from a different place — Merkin’s Ascot, which lost all of its $1.7 billion in the scheme, instead of Ariel and Gabriel funds, which pulled their money out while the going was good. [Bloomberg]