the stamford smoke-out

SEC Brings Steve Cohen In for a Little Talking-To

U can’t touch this. Photo: Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The fraud-busting regulators at the SEC, who have been on a tear finding insider-trading culprits on Wall Street and smoking them out of their mahogany-lined holes, want to nail billionaire art collector Steve Cohen for trading on illegal information at his Stamford-based hedge fund, SAC Capital.

Really want to. Like, would trade a Raj and two Guptas for it.

Cohen has now been deposed by the SEC, Bloomberg reports, in connection with trades made at SAC Capital that smelled a little fishy to the regulators.

Finra, which monitors securities markets for suspicious trades, referred to the SEC at least 18 trades by SAC Capital in the past 11 years that were executed close to market-moving announcements including mergers and the release of clinical- trial results for new drugs.

Two former SAC portfolio managers, Donald Longueuil and Noah Freeman, pleaded guilty to trading on inside information last year. But Cohen, the big kahuna, has proved harder to reel in. For years, regulators have circled him, questioning former employees, looking into Cohen’s Big Book, and hiding in the bushes outside the Crab Shell. (Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the picture.)

If putting Cohen in a room with a camcorder and asking him a bunch of questions doesn’t work, the SEC will be forced to use Plan B for bringing down high-flying hedge-fund managers: Asking them really, really nicely to confess to everything.

Steve Cohen Gets a Deposition