StackOverflowError computing factorial of a BigInteger?

The problem here looks like its a stack overflow from too much recursion (5000 recursive calls looks like about the right number of calls to blow out a Java call stack) and not a limitation of BigInteger. Rewriting the factorial function iteratively should fix this. For example:

public static BigInteger factorial(BigInteger n) {
    BigInteger result = BigInteger.ONE;

    while (!n.equals(BigInteger.ZERO)) {
        result = result.multiply(n);
        n = n.subtract(BigInteger.ONE);
    }

    return result;
}

Hope this helps!