In 2013, I received a call from a Washington Post reporter about an insider trading indictment that had just been unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) against a major New York hedge fund we had sued eight years earlier alleging, among other things, the very conduct that was the subject of the indictment. The reporter said, "there are paragraphs in this indictment that read verbatim like they are from your complaint. How did you know this seven years ago?" The answer was simple: "We looked and listened."

I explained that we had conducted an extensive year-long pre-litigation investigation that generated witness accounts and additional evidence of insider trading and other market abuses we ultimately alleged. And it was no coincidence that the same hedge fund and facts became the target of a lengthy FBI and grand jury investigation and subsequent SDNY indictment and conviction: we brought that evidence to them. Of course, the government needed to conduct its own, far more extensive investigation aided by grand jury subpoenas and FBI resources to make a federal criminal case, but it all began with a presentation of our investigative findings to the FBI and SDNY.