"Research is sort of doing your homework ahead of time," Smith testified after pleading guilty to insider trading and agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors. "Getting the number is more like cheating on the test."

The case was the first one focused exclusively on insider trading in which prosecutors wiretapped their targets' telephone conversations, a tactic used in organized crime investigations. Jurors heard more than 40 recordings of Rajaratnam, in some of which he can be heard gathering secrets from his sources.

"They're gonna guide down," Danielle Chiesi, an analyst at New Caslte Funds LLC, told Rajaratnam on July 24, 2008, after she got an insider's leak that Akamai Technologies Inc. would lower its forecast. "I just got a tip from my guy."

Earnings Announcements

Rajaratnam used inside information to trade ahead of public announcements about earnings, forecasts, mergers and spinoffs involving more than a dozen companies, according to the evidence at the trial. Among them were Santa Clara, California-based Intel, New York-based Goldman Sachs, Google Inc., ATI Technologies Inc., Akamai Technologies Inc. and Hilton Hotels Corp.

Prosecutors said Rajaratnam's sources included Rajat Gupta, who until last year was a director at Goldman Sachs, and Kamal Ahmed, a Morgan Stanley investment banker who prosecutors said passed tips through Smith. Both deny wrongdoing, and neither has been criminally charged.

Born in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, Rajaratnam was educated there at St. Thomas' Preparatory School before leaving for England, where he studied engineering at the University of Sussex. He came to the U.S. to get his master's of business administration, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1983.

Wharton Classmates

Two of his Wharton classmates -- Anil Kumar, who became a partner at McKinsey & Co., and Rajiv Goel, who was a managing director at Intel -- testified against him at the trial, telling jurors how their relationships began at the school and how they turned to crime. Both pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors.

Rajaratnam's first job after graduation was at Chase Manhattan Bank, where he was a lending officer in the group that made loans to high-tech companies. In 1985, he joined Needham & Co., a New York-based investment bank that specialized in technology and health-care companies.

He started as an analyst covering the electronics industry and rose through the ranks, becoming head of research in 1987, chief operating officer in 1989 and president in 1991. A year later, at 34, Rajaratnam started a fund, Needham Emerging Growth Partners LP, according to Galleon's marketing documents.

Galleon Formed