Black Edge by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Author:Sheelah Kolhatkar
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

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* Longueuil’s fiancée was never charged with any wrongdoing.

CHAPTER 10

OCCAM’S RAZOR

Early Monday morning, November 22, 2010, two days after The Wall Street Journal set off a weekend of frantic evidence destruction, a fleet of unmarked cars pulled up outside 1 Landmark Square, an office tower in the center of Stamford, Connecticut. A dozen federal agents were inside the vehicles.

Special Agent Dave Makol was a block away. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed a number.

Inside the office tower, a phone rang.

“Hello?” a man answered.

Makol identified himself as an FBI agent. “We know you’ve been involved in insider trading,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of stuff going down later, and it’s going to affect you and your family. Your life is never going to be the same.”

Their investigation was focused on expert networks, Makol continued, and they wanted the man to cooperate. When the man asked for more information, Makol said he couldn’t be more specific. “We’re at the McDonald’s next door,” he said. “If you want to come down and talk to us, that’d be great.”

The man wasn’t sure what to do. He was scared to say anything. He told Makol that he needed to think about it.

Makol said they didn’t have much time to wait.

The man was Todd Newman, a forty-five-year-old portfolio manager at a hedge fund called Diamondback Capital. He hung up the phone and ran one floor down to the Diamondback general counsel’s office. He relayed the whole exchange to the company’s legal counsel and its COO, John Hagarty.

“Is there something you did?” Hagarty asked, staring into Newman’s eyes. Hagarty had only been on the job for three months. For a moment, he wondered whether Newman was wearing a wire or something, the situation was so bizarre. The look on Newman’s face was one of terror.

No, Newman said, he hadn’t done anything. “I’ll just go over there and talk to them. I don’t have anything to hide.”

“I don’t know if you want to do that,” Hagarty said.

“I think I need a lawyer,” Newman said.

The legal counsel threw out a few names of lawyers he knew, and Newman decided to walk over to the office of one of them, just up the street. Incredibly, even though the block was crawling with FBI agents, he walked unnoticed out the front door of the building.

As Newman made his way down the street, the elevators opened on the fourteenth floor, just outside Diamondback’s reception area, and a team of FBI agents fanned out wearing bulletproof vests. This was the moment when it seemed as if a man with a bullhorn might jump out and yell “Cut!” and things would go back to normal. The agents looked like they were ready to charge into a terrorist safe house rather than an office filled with Wharton graduates tapping away on keyboards.

“FBI!” they shouted, flashing their badges.

Startled receptionists and traders sat up in their chairs, unsure what to do. Agents filed between the rows of desks, commanding people to back away from their computers.

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