[ by Melanie Gretchen and Howard Haykin ] Now, Perhaps You Like to Reconsider our Settlement Offer. The United States attorney's office for the Southern District of New York is enjoying a winning streak since the wide-ranging investigation began in 2009.  Most people facing charges will enter into a settlement or cooperate for the possibility of lesser charges or punishment.  Those who pled not guilty have tried every trick in the book, the most recent of which was hedge fund manager Douglas Whitman.  Like former Goldman director Rajat Gupta and Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam before him, the odds of a victory for the defense have gotten considerably smaller.  Whitman marked prosecutor Preet Bharara's 8th straight win. Playing into the government's streak is the increasingly common presence of cooperating witnesses, transcripts of phone calls, e-mails, and circumstantial evidence of timing.  Case in point: Rajaratnam bought shares of Goldman within minutes of a call from Gupta.  Although the Justice Department cannot ride this wave of success forever, it is important to note that the wins have been no small potatoes: in the case of Rajaratnam, Mr. Bharara convicted the former hedge fund manager of all 14 counts, for which he is currently serving 11 years, the longest amount for recent insider trading cases. In in their not guilty pleas, defendants have relied on a number of refutes:

• Rajaratnam argued the information he had received was not material to his trading, although he did not testify at his trial.
• Gupta, who was convicted of tipping off Mr. Rajaratnam, identified other potential sources of the inside information to argue that prosecutors had not met the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
• James Fleishman, who ran an expert network firm, claimed that he was unaware that outside consultants were breaching their duties by disclosing confidential information.
• Winifred Jiau, a technology consultant and one of the first outside experts convicted, unsuccessfully argued that the information she dispensed was also not material, when recordings showed her talking to hedge funds about earnings at Nvidia and Marvell Technology before they were announced.

Unfortunately for them, those recorded discussing a company's prospects reveal that their statements at the time belie subsequent claims of ignorance, good faith or the unimportance of the confidential information.  To date, the FBI disclosed in February that it had targeted 120 people in current insider trading investigations. For further details, go to [Dealbook, 8/21/12].