The ex-wife oh hedge fund billionare Steve Cohen is ramping up her legal fight – in which she accses CoHen (center) of racketeering and insider trading – by taking the story to the FBI agent B.J.Kang, who is emerging as the most feared man on Wall Street
Hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen’s ex-wife Patricia Cohen alerted the FBI of his alleged trading shenanigans more than two years before filing her explosive lawsuit accusing him of profiting from nonpublic information as far back as 1985, The Post has learned.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Patricia in 2007 contacted FBI Special Agent B.J. Kang about the same suspicious activities she detailed in the lawsuit she filed earlier this week.
Sources said Kang interviewed Patricia Cohen at her home on the Upper East Side, where she recounted her story of her ex-husband knowing about General Electric’s 1985 purchase of RCA before the deal was publicly announced.
Patricia Cohen later spoke with Kang’s supervisor, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Patrick Carroll, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Cohen was interviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission about trades tied to the GE-RCA merger, but he pleaded the Fifth, according to the lawsuit.
On Wednesday, Patricia, who’s been split from Cohen for 20 years, shocked Wall Street when she filed a federal lawsuit against Cohen accusing the 53-year-old hedge-fund king of cheating her out of millions in their divorce proceedings and admitting to have traded on confidential information.
Cohen, through a spokesman, has denied his ex-wife’s charges.
The FBI declined to comment about Kang speaking with Patricia Cohen.
Patricia’s attorney, Paul Batista, also declined comment.
Sources said Patricia contacted Kang after she read a published story that mentioned Kang in relation to Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings, which had accused more than a dozen hedge funds, including Cohen’s SAC Capital, of manipulating the company’s stock. Cohen was never charged in the Fairfax case.
Kang has been at the center of a number of high-profile criminal cases involving Wall Street. He’s currently head of a widespread insider-trading probe that has already ensnared more than 20 people, including executives from high-profile companies like IBM and law firm Ropes and Gray, sources tell The Post.
He was the FBI agent who took Galleon Group boss Raj Rajaratnam away in handcuffs after he was busted on insider-trading charges, and was involved in the criminal case involving Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. kaja.whitehouse@nypost.com