Galleon's Profit on Alleged Gupta Tips: Over $13 Million

Billionaire hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen, one of the most high-profile and controversial Wall Street figures of the last decade, has been implicated in what federal officials are calling “the largest insider trading case ever charged by the SEC,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

The trial of the biggest suspect in a big US crackdown on Wall Street insider trading, former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, started Monday in New York.Gupta, 63, could face a double-digit prison sentence if convicted in a probe that last year saw his friend, hedge fund magnate Raj Rajaratnam, sentenced to 11 years for insider trading.Gupta is in part accused of passing hugely sensitive -- and lucrative -- insider information about Goldman Sachs to Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group.

Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs board member accused of insider trading, could face a 25-year sentence if convicted of sharing confidential Goldman information with Galleon Group's Raj Rajaratnam.Rajat Gupta, a formerGoldman Sachs Group Inc.board member accused of insider trading, won't testify this week in his own defense, his lawyer said.

It’s been two decades since Michael Milken, aka “the junk bond king,” was sentenced to ten years in prison following a blockbuster insider trading investigation that shined a light on bad Wall Street behavior during the go-go 1980s. At the time, federal prosecutors hoped the Milken conviction, and that of his fellow Wall Street fraudster Ivan Boesky, would send a powerful message to Wall Street that there are serious consequences for insider trading.

By Shock Exchange:The much awaited trial of Rajat Gupta, former head of McKinsey & Co. and board member of Goldman Sachs (Goldman (GS)) and Procter & Gamble (P&G (PG)), finally began in May 2012. Insider trading cases after the financial crisis had been relegated to hedge funds, consultants and small investors.