Steve Cohen, the ultimate hedge fund mystery man, sure likes to keep the puzzles coming.
The big question currently swirling around the billionaire — who’s reportedly seeking to cut a deal with the feds over insider-trading criminal charges facing his firm — is whether he will make the ultimate sacrifice and plead guilty.
One college pal of Cohen’s said she doesn’t believe Cohen, who has adamantly denied the allegations thus far, would give in so easily. She doesn’t even believe he’s in settlement talks.
“That’s not his mentality,” the Wharton grad said of the founder of the once-$15 billion hedge-fund empire SAC Capital Advisors.
Some cite Cohen’s notorious need for privacy as motivation to cut a deal rather than face the circus of two trials.
Indeed, Cohen’s private ways are a frequent topic of conversation in Greenwich, Conn., where he resides with his second wife, Alexandra.
One famous story among the parents of students at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where the Cohens’ twin daughters attended school, involves a big party the Cohens threw for the twins’ classmates years ago, complete with a bouncing castle.
When the parents arrived at the mansion on Crown Lane, they were stopped at the front gate and forbidden to enter the property, one parent told The Post. Security guards with clipboards checked the children’s names off, like at a nightclub, and put the kids on a golf cart to be delivered to the party within the stone walls.
“It was the most disconcerting thing,” she said.
In July, Cohen’s SAC Capital was charged criminally by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara for insider trading that was “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without precedent in the hedge-fund industry.” Six of the eight former employees cited in the complaint have pleaded guilty and could be called to testify.
Cohen, 57, was also charged personally by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failure to supervise two employees now facing trial for insider trading.
Cohen could also be seeking a deal to obtain for peace of mind with his business, experts said. A guilty plea would likely result in a ban from the securities industry, but Cohen — who is estimated to have roughly $7.5 billion of his own money with SAC — could still run a family office.
Cohen is notorious for being on top of the most minor details when it comes to his business interests, including his massive art collection.
Jim Rowen, who now works for hedge-fund firm Renaissance Technologies, used to joke that one of his key duties as chief financial officer at SAC was to ensure the backup generators were running. They were meant to protect Cohen’s frozen-blood sculpture by the artist Marc Quinn — which sat in Cohen’s office — from melting in a blackout, sources told The Post. Rowen declined a request for comment.