Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Danielle Chiesi spent a lot of time in hotel ballrooms and bars during the past decade. As an analyst at New Castle Funds LLC, a New York hedge fund firm that manages about $1 billion, she was a regular at conferences on technology stocks, where she could get face time with executives and press them on how many microprocessors and how much software they were shipping that quarter. Chiesi wore short skirts and low-cut tops, according to people who saw her over the years. One ploy was to go barhopping with a group, and then peel someone off to talk to on the dance floor, says a person who attended conferences with her. A blond, blue-eyed former teenage beauty queen, Chiesi used her sexuality to build sources at male-dominated tech companies, says Deborah Stapleton, president of Stapleton Communications Inc., an investor relations company in Palo Alto, California. âIt amazes me that grown, wealthy, successful, hardworking men fell for that,â Stapleton says. Chiesi was proud of her network, too. âShe bragged about her contacts in public,â Stapleton says. âShe was like a teenager who wanted everyone to know she knew some rock star.â U.S. authorities say Chiesi, 44, crossed the line in her pursuit of secrets. They charged her and 19 others with securities fraud in the largest insider-trading case prosecuted since the 1980s, when stock market arbitrager Ivan Boesky paid a $100 million fine and spent three years in prison. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=apTuckYhnYYU&pos=10
It just comes down to this: don't trust anyone who isn't yourself. And no one should "manage" or "trade" money unless its you.