Business

Steinberg wife to pals: No wearing bling near jury

The wife of SAC Capital portfolio manager Michael Steinberg doesn’t want the jury hearing evidence in her husband’s insider trading trial to see just how rich they are, The Post has learned.

Liz Steinberg, who has been noticeably dressed down during her husband’s four-week trial in Manhattan federal court, sent an email to supporters days before the trial started to instruct them to leave the bling at home if they plan to attend the trial.

“Dress conservatively,” the email instructed, adding that women would be wise to check their furs, jewels and designer handbags at the door.

“We request that women wear no jewelry or furs, and no designer scarves, handbags, etc.,” said the Nov. 15 email, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

Steinberg, 41, stands accused of earning millions from illicit trades while working at a unit of Steve Cohen’s SAC hedge fund.

The one-time $15 billion fund pleaded guilty earlier this year to a decade of illegal insider trading.

Steinberg is the highest-ranking of eight SAC employees caught in US Attorney Preet Bharara’s insider-trading probe.

Six of the eight have pleaded guilty. Steinberg is the first of two to take the case to trial.

Liz Steinberg, sporting her long blond hair in a ponytail at the nape of her neck, has attended the trial regularly, sitting behind her husband to offer her support. Battling a cold nearly the entire trial, she has been noticeably subdued in appearance during the trial, without any ornate or obviously expensive jewelry.

Married to Steinberg since 1999, Liz is “not flamboyant or loud” in her style normally, one acquaintance told The Post.

The couple live in an $8 million Park Ave. co-op and are known to dress in an expensive but understated style, according to an acquaintance.

Other attendees who have appeared in the downtown courthouse to support Steinberg include Sandy Heller, art adviser to Cohen, and Heller’s brother, Andy, the former chief operating officer of hedge fund Exis Capital.

Neither Heller returned a request for comment. Steinberg’s lawyer, Barry Berke, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Liz’s email thanks her and her husband’s friends for their support “during this stressful time.”

In court Monday, both the prosecution and the defense gave their closing arguments, hoping to sway the three-man, nine-woman jury, which is expected to begin deliberation Tuesday morning.

In the front row, sitting next to Liz Steinberg, were her parents and her husband’s parents, who have attended each day of the four-week trial.

The prosecution argues that Steinberg, who faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, knew he was getting illegal information from his research analyst, Jon Horvath, the government’s key witness.

“He had information not available to ordinary investors who played by the rules,” Assistant US Attorney Harry Chernoff told the jury in a two-hour summation of the government’s case against Steinberg, who is accused of conspiracy and securities fraud.

When Steinberg received inside information, “he gladly took it and he traded on it again and again,” Chernoff said, reiterating several of the trades at the core of the case against Steinberg.

The government’s case rests largely on the testimony of Horvath, who confessed to insider trading and is cooperating with the government. Steinberg’s defense continued to paint him as a perpetual liar trying to save his own skin by pointing the finger at Steinberg, his former boss.

Both prosecutors and the defense, in four weeks of testimony, offered mind-numbing reams of sometimes contradictory emails, phone calls, instant messages and trading records to bolster their views.

The government must prove that Steinberg knew the information he traded on was illicit. As the defense pointed out, Horvath admitted he never explicitly told Steinberg that the information was illegal.

But prosecutors said that wasn’t necessary. The type of detailed, specific earnings numbers Horvath got from his corrupt circle of research analysts and their sources inside companies would not have been given out by investor-relations departments to select analysts ahead of announcements. As a seasoned finance professional, prosecutors argued, Steinberg knew that.

In one key email that prosecutors said showed that Steinberg knew the information on tech company Dell was illicit, he wrote another SAC portfolio manager: “Normally we would never divulge information like this, so please be discreet.”

Moreover, Steinberg never took any of the questionable information to SAC’s compliance department, which trained its employees to report any suspicious information and block trading in securities of affected companies.

“Did he ask compliance to check it out?” asked Chernoff. “Of course not.”

In his two-and-a-half-hour closing argument, defense lawyer Barry Berke smiled at the jurors, whom he called “extraordinarily attentive.” He then focused on reasonable doubt, telling the jury that “Jon Horvath alone is walking, talking reasonable doubt” and that the government’s case “has completely collapsed” as a result.

Chernoff admitted that Horvath, a confessed criminal, “has made some bad choices in his life.” But he defended Horvath’s inconsistent statements that Berke used to discredit Horvath as lapses in memory.