A few days ago, I spotlighted Ira Rennert’s shenanigans: playing around in his $185 million estate while his bankrupt company leaves 2,000 steelworkers without a pension. Over the weekend, there was more to report (from The New York Times):

U.S. Moves to Seize Bankrupt Steel Maker’s Pension Plan

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

The federal government said it filed suit yesterday to seize the pension plan of the bankrupt WCI Steel, saying the plan was more than $100 million short of the amount it needed. The move is a first step toward holding WCI’s corporate parent, the Renco Group, responsible for the money.

The Renco Group is a privately held company whose assets include operations in mining and heavy industry, in addition to WCI Steel. Its holdings also include Fair Field, the Hamptons estate of Renco’s founder, Ira L. Rennert. The house has an assessed value of $185 million, according to local tax records.

“Our action today is designed to protect workers from lost benefits and the pension insurance program from an unnecessary claim,” Bradley D. Belt, the executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, said in a statement.

A lawyer representing Renco on pension matters, Gary M. Ford, said Renco would not fight the pension agency’s action, which he said was necessitated by a group of creditors trying to dump the pension plan. Mr. Ford said the Renco Group agreed with the government’s effort “to prevent a deliberate attempt by the noteholders to terminate the pension plan by putting it in an intolerably precarious circumstance.”

….When a pension plan defaults, the pension agency has the power to go after the assets of any companies that are more than 80 percent controlled by the same corporate parent. The agency uses this power only rarely, however, because in most pension failures, the sponsoring company is bankrupt and there is little point in going after the small amount of money in its related entities.

….The government said that if the pension fund were not made solvent, the steelworkers might lose about $23 million in benefits. This is because of limits built into the federal pension insurance program. The steelworker plan promises certain benefits that the government does not cover.

…The pension agency said yesterday that the deficit was currently $117 million.

….The government will be in a stronger position to make Renco pay some of that cash into the pension fund if it threatens to put a lien on Mr. Rennert’s estate.

But for the government to have any chance of laying claim to Mr. Rennert’s holdings, it had to file its lawsuit before Monday’s hearing in Bankruptcy Court in Akron on the noteholders’ plan.

I say the AFL-CIO and Change To Win should file friend of the court briefs arguing for the seizure of Rennert’s estate. Make the guy homeless.