Prosecutors had sought a sentence of up to more than 20 years
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of up to more than 20 years in prison, while Rajaratnam’s lawyers had asked for no more than 8 years.
Rajaratnam’s sentence is one of the longer ones in recent insider trading cases, and several over recent months that his apparent lock of contrition would likely work against him.
Even so, a Wall Street Journal report pointed out that sentences in white-collar cases like insider trading have been rising in recent years.
According to the paper’s analysis, in the past two years, such defendants convicted in New York federal courts got 2.5-year sentences, up from 18 months in the past decade and 11.5 months between 1993 and 1999.
Among other recently convicted inside traders, Zvi Goffer got 10 years, Danielle Chiesi, a consultant to Rajaratnam at Galleon, got 2.5 years, and Joseph Contorinis, a former portfolio manager in Jefferies Group Inc.’s asset-management unit, got six years in prison.