Inside Trader Gets Record Prison Sentence of … 11 Years

Posted on Oct 13, 2011

online.wsj.com

Raj Rajaratnam was ordered to pay a $10 million fine and to forfeit $53.8 million.

The Wall Street Journal got our attention with Thursday’s breathless report about Raj Rajaratnam, whom the Murdochian concern dubbed “the face of the biggest trading scandal in a generation” and his newly dispensed prison sentence, “the longest-ever term handed down for an insider case.” So how long will Rajaratnam be locked up, if he’s unlucky?

Answer: all of 11 years. Take that, Wall Street corruption!  —KA

The Wall Street Journal:

While Mr. Rajaratnam’s prison term is the longest sentence imposed for insider trading, it is far less than what prosecutors had been seeking.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of up to 24 years and five months behind bars for the former hedge-fund titan. Mr. Rajaratnam’s lawyers—citing health problems, among other factors—had been urging the judge to consider a much more lenient sentence.

The 54-year-old co-founder of Galleon Group, who was convicted of five counts of conspiracy and nine counts of insider trading in May, was accused by prosecutors of being at the center of the one of the biggest insider-trading schemes ever unearthed. Mr. Rajaratnam is the highest-profile person to be prosecuted so far as part of a broad U.S. government crackdown.

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