RPT-Insider probe: Late-night search for garbage truck

(Repeating to remove extraneous word in 2nd paragraph)

* Cases built on recordings, BlackBerry messages

* Two defendants said to endorse destruction of evidence (Editors' note: language in paragraph 15 may be objectionable to some readers)

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Feb 8 (Reuters) - "Yo. Deleted them."

That message from hedge fund analyst Jason Pflaum went to his boss Samir Barai, who had ordered the destruction of BlackBerry messages relevant to an insider trading case, the government said in a complaint unsealed on Tuesday.

Little did Barai know that Pflaum was cooperating with prosecutors at the time they were swapping messages.

It was a similar situation weeks later, when hedge fund manager Donald Longueuil told another cooperating defendant, analyst Noah Freeman, he had trolled the nighttime streets of Manhattan in search of a garbage truck into which he could toss evidence, the complaint said.

The charges that prosecutors unveiled on Tuesday against the four men [ID:nN08271707] came in cases built in part from intercepted, often colorful electronic communications detailing mischief seemingly more at home in a B-movie caper than the world of high finance.

Other cases in the probe have also been built from wiretaps and other electronic messages. Pflaum and Freeman agreed to plead guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors said Freeman lives in Boston and the other defendants in Manhattan.

SLEEPLESS IN NEW YORK

According to the complaint, Barai, rattled by media coverage about the probe, beseeched Pflaum in a Nov. 19, 2010 BlackBerry message to "delete ur bbm chatr," meaning BlackBerry messages with Barai.

Pflaum answered "Yo. Deleted them" the next morning, while admitting he "didn't sleep so well last night."

Barai answered that he "didn't sleep much either," and that Pflaum should "shred as much as u can" and delete emails from two other workers at his firm, Barai Capital Management.

"I deleted mine," Barai is said to have added.

THE DARKENED QUEST FOR A GARBAGE TRUCK

Another person who may have had trouble sleeping is Longueuil, who on Dec. 20 told Freeman in a recorded conversation he had destroyed a flash drive and two external hard drives, according to the complaint.

So, Freeman asked: How did he get rid of the evidence?

"Oh it's easy. You take two pairs of pliers, and then you rip it open," Longueuil said, according to the complaint.

"Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m.... 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket, ... and leave the apartment and I go on like a 20-block walk around the city ... and try to find a, a garbage truck," Longueuil is said to have added.

"And threw the shit in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks ... four different garbage trucks," he is said to have added.

Lawyers for Barai and Longueuil could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Grant McCool, editing by Dave Zimmerman)