SAC’s Cohen Pulled Deeper Into Trading Probe by Martoma

For the sixth time, the U.S. government has linked an employee of hedge-fund icon Steven A. Cohen to insider trading while at the firm. For the first time, prosecutors said Cohen had talked with a defendant about the stocks in their complaint, pulling him deeper into one of the biggest investigations of securities fraud in history.

Mathew Martoma, a former health-care portfolio manager at a unit of Cohen’s $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors LP, was charged yesterday with using inside information from a clinical trial of an Alzheimer's drug to help the firm reap as much as $276 million in profits and averted losses on shares of Elan Corp. and Wyeth LLC. Cohen bought the pharmaceutical stocks on recommendations from Martoma and sold them after Martoma was told of disappointing results from the companies’ tests, prosecutors said.