NEW YORK, Feb 17 (Reuters) - An outspoken research analyst who made waves by refusing to cooperate in the U.S. government's broad insider-trading probe was charged with illegally supplying hedge funds with tips as part of his consulting service.
The charges against the analyst, John Kinnucan of Portland, Oregon, were announced on Friday shortly before a former executive at flash memory chipmaker SanDisk Corp pleaded guilty to conspiring to divulge company secrets to an unnamed consultant. A source close to the probe, who declined to be identified, said that consultant was Kinnucan.
Between 2008 and 2010, investigators said, Kinnucan paid insiders with cash, trips and other benefits to get secret information, including sales trends for Apple Inc's iPhone.
Kinnucan then funneled the information to hedge fund traders in California and New York in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars, investigators said.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Kinnucan passed on corporate secrets as part of a consulting arrangement with at least two unidentified hedge funds, including one in Dallas.
Investigators said he gave clients material nonpublic information that he obtained from employees at a variety of public technology companies, causing three of those clients to reap roughly $1.58 million of illicit trading gains.
The companies included SanDisk, network equipment maker F5 Networks Inc and chipmaker Flextronics International Ltd, investigators said. Flextronics and SanDisk insiders provided information on Apple, they added.
