Feds: 14 Charged In Insider Trading Case

LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Two attorneys and Wall Street professionals were among 14 people charged Thursday in a widening $53 million insider trading case that has snared one of America's richest men and shown white collar suspects to be using the cover-up tactics of drug dealers.

The actions raise to 20 the number of people who have been charged in the case first disclosed last month with the arrests of Galleon Group founder and hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam and five others.

At the time, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the first arrests "a wake-up call for Wall Street."

"Today the alarm bells have only grown louder," he said at a news conference Thursday.

Bharara said the defendants borrowed a "page from the drug dealer's play book" by using anonymous hard-to-trace prepaid cell phones to dodge detection by law enforcement. He said they also discussed falsifying company files to make it appear trades weren't based on secrets.

"When sophisticated business people begin to adopt the methods of common criminals, we have no choice but to treat them as such," he said.