Four defendants accused of insider trading on nonpublic Medicare information were found guilty by a jury late Thursday after a four-week trial, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced.

The defendants were charged, among other things, with conspiracy to convert government property to commit securities fraud, and wire and securities fraud conspiracy.

The primary scheme revolved around the passing of confidential information from an employee at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Christopher Worrall, to a former CMS employee turned political intelligence consultant, David Blaszczak, to two partners and analysts at a health care-focused hedge fund named Deerfield Management Co. The two partners, Theodore Huber and Robert Olan, were said to have received tips about three pending CMS decisions about Medicare reimbursement rates.

Huber and Olan then used the information to recommend trades that prosecutors said netted Deerfield more than $7 million in profits. Deerfield settled a related suit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for $4.6 million in August.

Another former Deerfield partner, Jordan Fogel, previously pleaded guilty in the scheme and cooperated with the government during the case.

Blaszczak also faced charges in a separate scheme involving other information obtained from CMS regarding reimbursement rates for home health providers. He was alleged to have provided that information to a different hedge fund, resulting in $330,000 in profits from trades tied to the material. The trader in that instance also pleaded guilty early on and was cooperating with the government.

The case represented a somewhat novel approach to insider trading prosecution, focused on the issue of political intelligence rather than the more often seen business intelligence underlying allegations of this kind of fraud.

“Trading on confidential nonpublic government information is just as illegal as trading on corporate insider information,” Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami said in a statement. “Our office is committed to policing and prosecuting both.”