Insider Trading

Phone taps, FBI surveillance, confidential informants — it's the stuff of major mafia investigations and Law & Order reruns. But they're also the tactics used by federal authorities against a slew of dark-suited desk jockeys accused in Wall Street's largest insider-trading scandal in decades. Authorities say billionaire hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, and 19 others illegally used secret information about public companies to inform investments that yielded some $60 million in profits over the past several years. The defendants, who also include traders, lawyers and executives at firms such as IBM and McKinsey & Co.,...