When "Calculated Risk" Means "Not Getting Caught".

For years, whenever anyone asked Raj Rajaratnam about the success of his hedge fund, the Galleon Group, he chalked it up to being hungrier than everyone else.

The Surprise-O-Meter barely budged off the peg for this one:

“It is pride, and I want to win,” Mr. Rajaratnam said in “The New Investment Superstars,” a book by Lois Peltz published in 2001. “After awhile, money is not the motivation. I want to win every time. Taking calculated risks gets my adrenaline pumping.”

Now prosecutors are claiming that Mr. Rajaratnam, 52, crossed the line into criminal activity.

At dawn on Friday, Mr. Rajaratnam was arrested at his expensive Manhattan home, charged with running the biggest insider trading scheme involving a hedge fund. He and five others are accused by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission of relying on a vast network of company insiders and consultants to make more than $20 million in profit from 2006 to 2009.

Mr. Rajaratnam’s lawyer has said his client is innocent.

Last comment first: Of course his lawyer says he's innocent. Everybody's lawyers say that. When was the last time you saw some guy who got arrested's lawyer step in front of the cameras and say: "We always wondered when that filthy sonuvabitch would get caught red-handed"?

I imagine that folks are going to look at the fact that this guy is worth well over a billion smackaroos and ask why he'd risk it all for a comparatively measly sum of $20 million over nearly four years. Ego, pride, hubris, maybe? Or maybe that $20 million is only what the prosecutors think they can prove and the real amount of ill-gotten gains is far higher? Maybe insider trading was the majority of the way they got their information?