Late on a Friday evening in October 2008, just before 11pm, Danielle Chiesi, a consultant to the hedge fund New Castle Partners and a sometime confidant of Raj Rajaratnam, the president of the Galleon Group, another hedge fund, took a phone call at her New York apartment.

According to transcripts from an FBI wiretap, it was an executive Ms Chiesi knew from Akamai, a Massachusetts-based technology company. “Danielle,” he said, “I have a major present for you.”