Lawyers for fallen Internet tycoon Halsey Minor are trying to hang on to $850,000 he paid them just hours before a judge ordered him to cough up $6.6 million to Sotheby’s for reneging on auction bids.

The DLA Piper law firm, in papers filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court, said it also wants an order stopping Sotheby’s lawyers from sending “threatening letters” demanding that it turn over the money or face legal action over “the entire unsatisfied amount of the judgment.”