She “played him like a finely tuned piano” and now the feds are putting the screws to him.
Kieran Taylor, a former executive with Akamai Technologies, was sued Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission for tipping off the former beauty-queen-turned-trader Danielle Chiesi about the company’s financial plans.
Taylor, 45, agreed to settle the charges for $145,000.
Taylor, who was Akamai’s senior director of marketing, told Chiesi, a lifelong family friend, about the Internet technology company’s plans to lower its revenue estimate for 2008, the SEC said.
Chiesi’s hedge fund, New Castle, shorted Akamai’s stock to profit off the news. Chiesi also shared the tip with hedge fund honcho Raj Rajaratnam, who’s serving 11 years in lock-up for insider trading, and with hedge fund manager Steve “Tuna” Fortuna, founder of S2 Capital.
“They’re gonna guide down. I just got a call from my guy. I played him like a finely tuned piano,” Chiesi told Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon Group hedge fund, a week before the bad news became public.
Taylor — who was later caught on tape having flirtatious chats with the blonde beauty — also sold his Akamai stock leading up to the announcement, thus saving him $20,635 when the stock fell.
It wasn’t the first time Chiesi “played” a high-powered executive. Bob Moffat, a former IBM executive, claimed that Chiesi, with whom he had been intimate, “played him” to obtain stock tips on IBM and AMD.
In October 2008, Taylor promised to give her more information.
“Danielle, I have a major present for you,” he teased. When asked what is was, he told her just what she wanted to hear: “Information.”
“Well that is a great present,” she said. “Oh baby, I love you so much. I’ll come over there,” she said.
“No .. I’m going to come over,” he said, referring to his plans for a “clandestine” trip to New York. “I’ll stay at your place.”
Chiesi was released from prison this year after pleading guiltyin 2011.