After three weeks and 13 witnesses, the government on Friday rested its insider trading case against Michael S. Steinberg, a former fund manager at SAC Capital Advisors.
The defense’s case will take considerably less time. It said it might call one witness on Monday, and then both sides will present their closing arguments. Mr. Steinberg will not take the witness stand.
Seated in the Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, a jury of nine women and three men have been presented with hundreds of emails, phone records and trading records by the prosecution, often enduring hours of Wall Street jargon.
The prosecution, led by Antonia M. Apps, an assistant United States attorney, has accused Mr. Steinberg of trading the stocks of the technology companies Dell and Nvidia after receiving confidential information about their earnings from Jon Horvath, a former technology analyst at SAC.
They sought to establish that, under pressure from Mr. Steinberg to supply “edgy proprietary information,†Mr. Horvath turned to a network of analysts that shared nonpublic information.
“My edge is contacts at the company and their distribution channel,†Mr. Horvath wrote in an October 2007 email to an account used to send trading ideas to Steven A. Cohen, the founder of SAC.
Later in the email chain, Mr. Steinberg wrote: “I suspect the line about contacts at the company may wake up our legal eagles,†adding, “fortunately, to my knowledge, the guys don’t actually work there anymore.â€
The jury listened to hours of testimony from SAC employees that pulled back the curtain on the secretive world of SAC. They also heard from witnesses who have pleaded guilty in unrelated insider trading cases and employees from Dell and Nvidia.
The government rested its case after Salvatore Cincinelli, an F.B.I. agent working in the securities and fraud division, talked jurors through the records of Mr. Steinberg’s trades in Dell and Nvidia stocks, as well as the trading records of managers at other hedge funds who were receiving the same information from Mr. Horvath’s network.
The jurors were alert and engaged as Mr. Steinberg’s lead lawyer, Barry H. Berke, began his cross-examination, lobbing a quick succession of questions at Mr. Cincinelli, flipping through the charts the prosecution presented, asking about a figure in one chart before jumping to another chart and figure.
“What I’m trying to do is keep this simple,†Mr. Berke told Mr. Cincinelli as he questioned the validity of Mr. Cincinelli’s method of presenting the trading information on which Mr. Steinberg’s guilt or innocence may hinge.
At times Mr. Cincinelli was unable to follow, replying “I don’t recall.†Judge Richard J. Sullivan also interjected at one point to say he didn’t understand a question asked by Mr. Berke.
Jurors were also given one last glimpse into the world of insider trading when Hyung Lim took the witness stand. Mr. Lim, who worked at Altera Corporation and Broadcom, has pleaded guilty to insider trading charges. He admitted to providing his friend Danny Kuo, another analyst in Mr. Horvath’s information network who was employed at Whittier Trust, with nonpublic information about Nvidia.
When asked why he supplied information to Mr. Kuo even though he knew it was illegal, Mr. Lim replied, “It was easy information for me to get.â€
“Danny was a friend; he wanted help, so I just gave it to him,†he added. Mr. Lim said he and Mr. Kuo played poker together.
Mr. Berke’s performance was strongest during his seven-day cross-examination of Mr. Horvath. He has argued that Mr. Steinberg did not know the information he received from Mr. Horvath was obtained illegally.
The defense team has tried to discredit Mr. Horvath, who pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in September 2012 and agreed to help prosecutors in the investigation of Mr. Steinberg.
Mr. Steinberg’s trial strikes at the core of a decade-long investigation of SAC by the government. The trial began on Nov. 20, two weeks after SAC agreed to pay $1.2 billion and plead guilty to five counts of insider trading violations. Of the eight SAC employees to be charged criminally, six have pleaded guilty to securities fraud in what the government has called a “systematic†insider trading scheme.
