A former securities trader known as Octopussy because of his many sources of information was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday after being found guilty of insider trading.

Zvi Goffer, 34, was convicted in June by a jury in federal court in New York on all counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit insider trading on pending mergers.

The case was part of a wide-ranging probe of insider trading by hedge funds and traders, which was noted for the use of FBI wiretaps and led to the conviction of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam.

U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said Goffer forfeited any claim to leniency by choosing to go to trial rather than admitting his crimes, as many of his co-defendants in the investigation elected to do.

You gambled and you lost, Sullivan said.

The judge also repeated his call on Wall Street to heed the message that insider trading can carry a stiff sentence.

Insider trading is very, very hard to detect and because of that has to be dealt with harshly, he said.

Prosecutors called Goffer, who once worked at Rajaratnam's Galleon Group hedge fund firm, the ringleader of a scheme to trade on tips about pending takeovers of computer network equipment maker 3Com Corp and Canadian drug company Axcan Pharma Inc.

Goffer was convicted along with his brother Emanuel Goffer and a third trader, Michael Kimelman. Both are scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Meanwhile, Rajaratnam's sentencing before a different Manhattan federal judge, Richard Holwell, was postponed on Wednesday to October 13 from September 27, a court filing showed.

No reason for the postponement was given. The office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Rajaratnam had no immediate comment.

Separately, a third Manhattan federal judge, Jed Rakoff, was due to sentence former technology company consultant Winifred Jiau later on Wednesday.

She was also convicted in June and the government has called on the judge to impose a 10-year sentence.

Octopussy was a character in the 1983 James Bond movie of the same name.

The case is USA v Zvi Goffer et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-00056.

(Reporting by Basil Katz; Additional reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Eddie Evans and Steve Orlofsky)

Raj Rajaratnam Insider trading