Another guilty plea in Galleon fraud case

The feds yesterday won the 10th guilty plea in their sprawling insider-trading case centering on fallen hedge fund titan Raj Rajaratnam.

Ali Hariri, a former executive at Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker Atheros Communications, joined the list of people in Rajaratnam’s orbit who have pleaded guilty to charges related to either passing on or trading on confidential information.

More than 20 people, including lawyers, hedge funders, consultants and tech executives, have been arrested in connection with the case, which the government calls the largest insider-trading scandal in US history.

Standing before a judge in Manhattan’s federal court, Hariri, a 38-year-old San Francisco resident, pleaded guilty to one charge of securities fraud and one charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

He faces up to 25 years in jail, but prosecutors are recommending a sentence of 24 to 30 months, even though he does not have a cooperation deal.

He has been placed on indefinite leave at Atheros.

Hariri told the judge he gave information — “the numbers at the company that I worked for” — to an unnamed person whom the feds say ran a hedge fund. The friend was identified in a lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission as Ali Far, founder of California’s Spherix Capital. Far has pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme and is cooperating with prosecutors.

Prosecutors said Hariri in January 2009 shared information about Atheros’ quarterly earnings ahead of the public release. Far traded on the information, netting a profit of “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” prosecutors said.

“Ali [Hariri] is a good man who made a mistake and he’s going to pay a very heavy price for it,” his lawyer Cristina Arguedas said.

During the hearing, a gaunt-looking Hariri said he’s been seeing a shrink “to deal with the stress of this situation,” and that he’s been having trouble sleeping.