(CNNMoney) In a move that could deal a death blow to one of the country's largest hedge funds, federal prosecutors announced criminal insider trading charges Thursday against SAC Capital, the firm run by billionaire investor Steven Cohen.
The indictment charges that the hedge fund was guilty of both "unlawful conduct by individual employees and an institutional indifference to that unlawful conduct."
The government alleges a pattern of insider trading that was "substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry."
SAC Capital did not immediately reply to CNNMoney's requests for comment.
The indictment charges that the insider trading started in 1999, and that the firm hired research analysts and money managers specifically because they possessed insider information.
The insider trading resulted in "hundreds of millions" of dollars of illegal profits and "avoided losses" for the hedge fund, according to the indictment, which says the firm should forfeit all that money as part of its penalty.
The indictment follows a wide-ranging investigation that has already implicated more than half-a-dozen current or former SAC employees.
Cohen himself has not been charged criminally, though the Securities and Exchange Commission announced civil charges against him last week, accusing him of failing to supervise employees who engaged in insider trading.
Investigators have been circling Cohen and SAC for years. The firm agreed in March to pay the SEC roughly $615 million in connection with alleged insider trading by employees including two portfolio managers, Mathew Martoma and Michael Steinberg.
Martoma and Steinberg have already been charged criminally and are awaiting trial. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Martoma is accused of selling and shorting shares of the pharmaceutical companies Elan (ELN) and Wyeth based on inside information from drug trials that had not been publicized. The trades allegedly allowed SAC to generate profits and avoid losses worth $276 million in total.
Steinberg is accused of insider trading in Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) and Nvidia (NVDA) stock. An analyst who reported to Steinberg, Jon Horvath, has already pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.
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