Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara is looking to keep his winning streak alive.
With a 6-0 record in trial convictions against defendants caught in his insider-trading probe, Wall Street’s top cop Wednesday will kick off his final trial emanating from that investigation.
Already the insider-trading probe has resulted in 68 convictions — including guilty pleas, the biggest Wall Street crackdown since the 1980s.
Squaring off against Bharara in Manhattan federal court are two well-heeled hedge-fund defendants: Anthony Chiasson, founder of the $4 billion hedge fund Level Global, and Todd Newman, a former money manager with Diamondback Global.
The beginning of jury selection was delayed more than a week because of Hurricane Sandy.
Chiasson and Newman stand accused of reaping more than $60 million in profits from trading confidential tips about computer maker Dell and graphics firm Nvidia.
The two men were charged in January as part of a “corrupt circle of friends” that included seven traders and analysts, according to the feds. Five have pleaded guilty to the charges and several of them have agreed to testify at the trial.
At this trial, though, prosecutors will enter the battle without having the wiretaps that helped nab fallen hedge fund giant Raj Rajaratnam.
The only wiretaps to have emerged in the case are between Chiasson and John Kinnucan, a former tech exec who pleaded guilty to insider trading but who is not directly involved in this case.
Chiasson’s lawyer, Greg Morvillo, has pressed to have the tapes barred, saying they aren’t relevant. Judge Richard Sullivan has not yet ruled on whether they may be played.
Newman’s lawyer, Steve Fishbein, will likely seek to use another taped conversation to discredit a key government witness: Jesse Tortora, a former Diamondback analyst.
Lawyers for both defendants are expected to argue that their clients were “downstream tippees” several layers removed from the source of the information, thereby raising questions as to whether they even knew the trades were illegal, sources close to the case said.