The mutual fund whistle-blower has revealed herself: Noreen Harrington, a former executive of the investment arm of the billionaire Stern family, The New York Times reported.
Harrington said she had often heard traders bragging on the Secaucus, New Jersey, trading floor of Hartz Group, a Stern family holding company, of how managers of various mutual funds would let them trade in and out of the funds long after the market day had ended for most of the funds’ other investors.
There was some chatter about putting trades through at 9 p.m., Harrington said Monday, recalling that within months of joining Stern Asset Management, a division of the Hartz Group, in 2001, she concluded that Stern’s hedge fund, Canary Capital, was able to process its fund purchases based on prices posted hours earlier.
Harrington identified herself in response to reporters’ phone calls, and the New York State attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, confirmed that a phone call from her had set in motion an ever- widening investigation by regulators into mutual fund trading.
