On October 30, 2017, the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy held a fireside chat with Sheelah Kolhatkar, author of Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street. In her book, Kolhatkar relives the challenges faced by federal prosecutors while investigating insider trading by SAC Capital, a hedge fund headed by Steve Cohen—a secretive, intense, and highly successful trader who made billions from short term investments and trading.
Kolhatkar discusses how and why she came to investigate the story, the major themes of the book, and what the Cohen case reveals about our legal system, the many personalities involved in SAC Capital and the federal investigation of the firm, the mentalities of different kinds of hedge funds, signs that signal insider trading to the government, and how different agencies operate in investigations.