Bloomberg – First came the biggest bear market since the 1930s, then Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme and the threat of increased regulation. Now hedge funds have a new concern: getting caught on tape as the government expands its use of wiretaps to ferret out insider trading.

Prosecutors, using secretly recorded phone conversations for the first time against hedge funds, alleged Oct. 16 that billionaire Raj Rajaratnam and five others made $20 million by swapping material inside information on companies such as Hilton Hotels Corp. and Google Inc. They may charge at least 10 more people soon, people familiar with the matter said last week.

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Tags: bear market, bernard madoff, hedge funds, insider trading, rajaratnam