Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire investor who ran one of the world’s largest hedge funds, was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy on Wednesday by a federal jury in Manhattan.

A jury of 12 members returned its verdict yesterday after hearing evidence that Rajaratnam, engaged in a seven-year conspiracy to trade on insider information from corporate executives, bankers, consultants, traders and directors of public companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) He gained $63.8 million from such transactions , prosecutors said.

Rajaratnam, who was convicted on all 14 counts, could face as much as 19 and a half years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The US government built its case against Rajaratnam with powerful wiretap evidence. Over a nine-month stretch in 2008, federal agents secretly recorded his telephone conversations. They listened in as Rajaratnam brazenly – and matter-of-factly – swapped inside stock tips with corporate insiders and fellow traders.

For years, Mr. Rajaratnam was lionized as one of Wall Street’s savviest investors. At its peak, his Galleon Group hedge fund managed more than $7 billion in assets. Investment banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley counted Galleon, which paid out roughly $300 million in trading commissions annually to brokerage firms, as one of their largest trading clients.

In 2009, federal agents arrested Rajaratnam at his Sutton Place apartment on Manhattan’s East Side. The government placed him at the center of a vast insider trading conspiracy, accusing him of using a corrupt network of tipsters to earn tens of millions of dollars in illegal trading profits in stocks including Google and Hilton Worldwide.

Galleon brought Rajaratnam great wealth. Forbes magazine pegged his net worth at $1.3 billion. He owns a second home in the wealthy suburb of Greenwich, Conn., and a condominium at the Setai Hotel in Miami Beach. During the trial, Rajaratnam’s former friends told the jury about lavish vacations including, for his 50th birthday, chartering a private jet to fly dozens of family and friends for a safari in Kenya.