Ex-Hedge Fund Manager Accused of Cover-up Involving Computer, Pliers and Garbage Trucks
It’s probably the first time that a portfolio manager used pliers as “a tool of the trade,” according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of Manhattan.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Bharara announced charges against three hedge fund managers accused of illegally trading on confidential information passed along by tech company insiders, according to stories by the New York Times DealBook blog, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the Wall Street Journal. Two of the managers are also accused of separate cover-ups that sound like “something out of a bad movie,” Bharara said.
One of the men, Donald Longueuil, formerly of SAC Capital Advisors, is accused of destroying his computer after reading an article about the investigation in the Wall Street Journal. According to the complaint, Longueuil described his methods to a former colleague who was cooperating with the government.
Longueuil is accused of telling the colleague: “F—in’ pulled the external drives apart. … Put ’em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. … 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face … jacket, … and leave the apartment and I go on like a 20 block walk around the city … and try to find a, a garbage truck … and threw the s–t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks … four different garbage trucks.”
A second defendant, Samir Barai of Barai Capital Management, is accused of sending electronic messages to an analyst cooperating with the government directing him to “shred as much as u can” and to delete prior messages from his BlackBerry Messenger.
