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&lt;p&gt;Two days before the insider trading case against Raj Rajaratnam began, Ivan Boesky celebrated his 74th birthday. Boesky, a native of Detroit and the son of Russian immigrants, is a former Wall Street arbitrageur who infamously confessed to insider trading charges in 1986. He&#39;s one of the central subjects of James B. Stewart&#39;s award-winning book &lt;em&gt;Den of Thieves&lt;/em&gt;, and is thought to have been the inspiration for Michael Douglas&#39; Academy Award-winning role of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone&#39;s 1987 film &quot;Wall Street&quot; (Gekko&#39;s &quot;greed is good&quot; speech is said to have been taken straight from a speech Boesky gave at Berkeley in 1986 in which Ivan called greed &quot;healthy&quot; and said &quot;you can be greedy and still feel good about yourself&quot;).&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;img class=&quot;embeddedObject&quot; src=&quot;http://content.screencast.com/users/dloos/folders/Jing/media/cbee3792-d938-4fe5-8b5c-e713410945d5/00000277.png&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; width=&quot;237&quot; height=&quot;305&quot; align=&quot;left&quot;&gt;By the mid 1980s, Boesky, a graduate of Michigan State University&#39;s law school, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars by investing in public firms he deemed to be prime takeover targets. Boesky would invest millions in these firms&#39; stocks, and, if the firms were acquired, their share prices would typically skyrocket. Boesky would then cash out and turn a quick (and quite large) profit.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;It turned out that Boesky was less a great predictor of a firm&#39;s imminent takeover than a great gainer of material inside information -- that is, he&#39;d receive tips from insiders about firms soon to be purchased and trade on that information (this is similar to what the SEC has accused Raj Rajaratnam of having done).&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Boesky, in addition to being a crook, was also a bit of an eccentric -- and not the most congenial of managers. He always wore three-piece black suits, a white starched shirt, and a gold chain hanging out of his vest pocket. He took a limousine to the office and, if he wouldn&#39;t be making it in on a certain day (he arrived at 7 a.m.), he&#39;d call in at 7:01; if no one answered the phones, he&#39;d fly into a rage.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Although he never worked the day after Thanksgiving, he expected all of his employees to be in the office, and just to make sure they were there, he&#39;d call in at least 10 times. Other days he wasn&#39;t in the office, he&#39;d call in up to 30 times.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once, Boesky called in during a fire drill, and when no one answered the phones, he grew furious. The following day, after finding out about the drill, he released this memo to his employees: &quot;Certainly I don&#39;t want you to risk your lives. But I extend my appreciation to those of you who stayed behind.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;At one point during his career, Boesky bought a puppy and kept it in his office; he even brought it along to meetings. However, after the dog, who was not yet housebroken, left a surprise pile (not of papers) on the floor of Ivan&#39;s office, no one who worked for Boesky ever saw the dog again.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Boesky was also known to be a picky eater. He&#39;d often eat just a single flake of a croissant for breakfast, one grape for lunch, and when he was hungry and actual ate (typically out at one of Manhattan&#39;s fancy establishments), he&#39;d do something like order one of each entree, take a bite of each one, choose the one he liked best, then send the rest back.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;After Boesky was busted and barred from the securities industry (he ended up serving three and a half years in jail), he quickly became the poster boy for Wall Street greed and hubris. His face was on the cover of &lt;em&gt;Time&lt;/em&gt;, and his name became synonymous with white-collar crime. Since, his name has been called out in television shows such as &quot;The Shield&quot; and &quot;Futurama,&quot; and in films such as &quot;Ocean&#39;s Eleven&quot; and &quot;American Psycho.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Today, 25 years after he plead guilty to insider trading, Boesky is thought to be broke, surviving on alimony checks he receives from his ex-wife.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Den of Thieves)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Related: Career Guide to Insider Trading, Chapter 16: Plea Agreements)&lt;/p&gt;

Derek Loosvelt

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