Raj Rajaratnam

Raj Rajaratnam was born in Sri Lanka and studied engineering at the University of Sussex before earning an MBA from the Wharton School. He worked at Chase Manhattan Bank and Needham & Company before co-founding the Galleon Group in 1997 with $0 in seed capital, eventually growing it to approximately $7 billion in assets. Galleon was focused on technology and healthcare equities and generated strong returns through a combination of intensive fundamental research and Rajaratnam's network of corporate insiders. In 2009 the FBI executed a wiretap operation — the first time wiretaps were used in an SEC insider trading case — recording Rajaratnam receiving material non-public information from corporate insiders at companies including Intel, IBM, and McKinsey & Company. He was arrested in October 2009 and charged with multiple counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. In 2011 he was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison — the longest prison sentence for insider trading in US history at the time. The Galleon case transformed Wall Street's approach to compliance and information controls, triggering wave of investment in surveillance and monitoring across hedge funds and banks.