Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
The Most Dangerous Man on Wall Street? | Tipper X
02 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is Tom Hardin's background before insider trading?
I've gone from being an analyst to actually being a partner, so having a piece of the equity. I also become aware that illegal insider trading is going on. I get a phone call.
Chapter 2: What triggers Tom's realization about insider trading?
Pronos was going to be acquired. Here's the date. Here's the price. Here's the private equity firm. She's like, oh, I'm going to make millions on this. Could you just take care of him? Could you write him a check for $10,000? And he's sliding me the FedEx envelope with cash over. So July 2008, I'm dropping off my dry cleaning. This guy on the sidewalk in Manhattan says, are you Tom? I turn around.
We think you can help us out. So a hedge fund, what we did was we traded stocks. And hedge funds charge usually a 1% to 2% management fee on the assets that you manage to cover the overhead expenses, salaries, and costs. And the hedge funds also get to keep 20% of profits. So if you're up $50 million that year, you get to keep $10 million and divide that as bonuses.
So in my early 20s, I loved leaving investment banking, which was just sort of focused on servicing clients, and getting into the game where I'm actually seeing my percentage of the profits of my stock trades calculated in Excel. And at 23, 24, 25 years old, that starts to become a number I've never seen in my life. It starts to become a big number. And so that's happening.
I loved it because it was a meritocracy, I called it. There wasn't politics. Hey, you pick the right stocks, you're going to make a lot of money. If you don't, you're going to get fired. And I liked actually having the scorecard there real time, but that can also lead to making other decisions, which we'll talk about and other pressures. So there's this need for a short-term performance.
We have investors who want to make money every quarter. So we need shorter term opportunities, you know, to kind of make money in the short term too. There was 12 analysts at my first firm. So it's sort of like an NBA team where like, you know, these young people making a lot of money. You can be replaced very easily if you start sort of missing your free throws, picking bad stocks.
We had the brokers where we were their clients. So like the Goldman Sachs would take us to like the Kentucky Derby. hang out in the tent or the Superbowl. One of our traders is playing like flag football with Michael Vick at the Superbowl. Like, so those really, those really neat opportunities in your twenties to have those trips, but also a lot of pressure to perform.
How long were you, were you there before something tragically went wrong?
That's quite a phrase. Yeah. So at my first firm, it closed around the.com crash, 2002, 2003. I I treaded my own account for other firms for a few years. And then I finally got my second job in 2006, where I was hired as a junior partner by a senior partner who was starting a hedge fund.
His seed capital came from a legendary value investor named Julian Robertson, which is called Tiger Management. So back in the day, the two biggest names in hedge funds were Julian Robertson and George Soros, which has a different connotation today, but those were the biggest names at the time. And so
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Chapter 3: How does Tom justify his involvement in insider trading?
Also, we're going to leave the link in the description box. You start working for this company. Yeah. And how like and I'm assuming everything's going OK. Like how long does that happen before? And you understand that you're now starting to realize like people are There's insider trading going on that.
And like I know you had sold said on the other podcast that like there were basically there were some firms out there where it was almost known that this is their business model. Yes. These guys go kind of like the. Have you ever seen Wolf of Wall Street? Yes. OK. You know the Bud Fox character right the Charlie Sheen plays them the young kid the Wall Street movie from the 80s Yeah from the 80s.
Oh, yeah, that's a press great example. Yeah.
Well, she was Belfort.
Yeah I've seen with Wall Street. I haven't seen whatever you're talking.
Oh Right. Yeah. Okay in the 80s.
Yeah. What did I say? I said wolf. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man I'm sorry. Just Wall Street. So Wall Street the first movie with yeah, that's the bud bud Fox is the main guys played by our Charlie Sheen When he was young, before he went crazy. And so, and Gordon Gekko is the main guy, right? Or Gordon Gekko is his boss.
But basically, Gordon Gekko gets his, like your story so reminds me of this, where Gordon Gekko manages a hedge fund or his own money. I think he manages probably a huge hedge fund, right?
I think at the time it was like a hedge fund or institutional money.
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Chapter 4: What consequences does Tom face from his actions?
But Gecko starts telling him, like, look. I need winners, not sometimes, not an average of you picking winning stock. I need winning stock tips every single time you come to me. And if you have to go out and get that, You know, by insider trading or whatever. He's like, and that's what you have to do to work with me. If not, kick rocks.
And, you know, Butterfox is making, whatever, $50,000 a year, 30 years ago. Probably the equivalent of $150,000. He's living in a fucking shitty, you know, little tiny efficiency. And he just kind of buckles. He's like, fuck. He's like, that's insider trading. He's like, but I'll do whatever I have to do. And I always love, not to, sorry, not to go off, but...
He actually comes up with an ingenious thing. He ends up buying into a cleaning company that cleans all of these law firms that represent these huge companies. So he can basically go into the law firms at night and pilfer their files and find out what's going on, get that information and use it. So that's one of the ways he does it, obviously. Great, great move.
But he gets in huge trouble, obviously. He blows up. He's doing amazing stuff. Starts dating Daryl Hannah, which was really hot then. Gets a huge condo and ends up, it all ends up coming, you know, coming down, you know, all around him. But great movie. It'd be great for the, like if you watch that movie, it'd be great for the... For the hook in this, there's an arrest scene, there's Gecko.
I'm telling you, there's all these great Wall Street scenes. I mean, it's perfect.
Yeah. And the first sort of insider trading arrest in the real industry happened in the 80s and 90s with Michael Milken was a big name, Ivan Borski. And so insider trading prosecution picked up then. So, yeah, so now in the mid-2000s, I know what's going on. I know my competition is doing it.
I never felt I'd be in the position to get that information because usually you had to have contacts inside these Silicon Valley companies, these tech stocks who were leaking information. And so what some hedge funds do, who had it as their business model, was they would hire a stock analyst from a Yahoo or a Microsoft or a Cisco agency.
who could call back to their contacts at the company and say, hey, either what companies are you going to buy? Because we'll buy those stocks. Or here's what Wall Street is thinking you're going to have for this quarter for their earnings. What are you actually going to do? And so I didn't have those connections.
I was just really good with Excel, valuing companies, picking my Google and my Yellow Page ideas. But that was going to be long term. At my second firm, we lost money the first quarter of investing, which shouldn't have mattered because we were investing over a one to three year horizon.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Tom face while cooperating with the FBI?
At this point, I'm like 30, still working in this capacity with the FBI. But my cooperation, I think, is starting to come to a close. I'm doing this less and less. And so I talked to an attorney. All I know about insider trading at that point is Martha Stewart. And that was obstruction of justice, not insider trading, where she sold the stock. And so I call him.
He's like, oh, you're not going to trial. I don't want your case. So he gave me a referral. And I talked to this attorney. He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You've been doing this almost two years.
You talked to Martha Stewart's attorney?
Attorney first.
Chapter 6: How did Tom's legal journey impact his relationships?
And he's like, oh, you're not going to go to trial. I'll give you a referral to, you're going to plead guilty. You cooperated. Okay. I'll give you a referral because it's not going to be a big case. Right. Big money case.
Not enough money in it for him. Yeah, exactly, for the trial.
Right. So he's like, you're pleading guilty. This is an easy one. Right. So he gives me a referral to a friend. I call my, to become my attorney.
Chapter 7: What insights does Tom share about insider trading and accountability?
I'm like, do you see this stuff with Siporex? He's like, yeah. I'm like, that's me. And he was like, well, why are you calling me now? I needed the case from your other attorney. I'm like, no, there was no other attorney. You're the first attorney I've spoken to. And he was shocked. He was like, Tom, did you know the first day you're supposed to hire me when the FBI approaches you?
And I'm like, this is a recurring theme.
Chapter 8: How does Tom view his transformation and future opportunities?
Hey, it's my first time doing this. Pretty straightforward.
Next time.
So next time, yeah, next time I'll do this. So he's like, we have to proffer with the assistant U.S. attorney. The proffer is you have to talk about all the bad stuff, the cooperation, all that. And so I'm proffering with the U.S. attorney, and they're like, tell us about all the times in your life that you've broken the law.
And I was like, when I was 17, I was speeding in college at the Napster. They're like, not that. I spoke to Joe in college. Okay. But I think they must feel bad. They're like, it's a clean guy, other than the four trades. So I proffered with the U.S. attorney. And then I eventually plead guilty. So 2009, late 2009, I plead guilty.
And I forgot to say like the FBI, they're like, you're doing such a great job for your country. This is the way they were framing it. And I'm patriotic. And I'm thinking about, I'm just trying to stay positive. So I'm like, maybe. You know what's going to happen? They're probably going to drop the charges. And maybe they're going to have me like the Frank Avondale.
Maybe I'll go back to the FBI every year and help them out. And so I'm thinking about I'm trying to just stay positive. And it's all a joke. They're not going to. You can't be a professional cooperator with the FBI. Once they're done with you, you're done. And so I go in the courtroom. and see the indictment for the first time.
And the judge says, how do you plead United States of America versus Thomas Harden? And of course I'm like, wait, I was doing this for my, no, I'm not. This is all. And then the young prosecutor, which I think for actual crimes are like, are the victims present? Are there, where are the victims? And he says, there's no victims. Right. Oh, and that's the rationalization. Like, and so, okay.
And so my attorney said, there's these things called the federal sentencing guidelines for financial crimes. They're looking at the 1.2 million your firm made. And so the guideline was 30 to 36 months. He said, now you've cooperated a lot. You wore a wire 48 times, which he couldn't believe. He's like, I can't believe you did this much cooperation without an attorney. I've never seen that.
But the judge you got, you know, you can look at the judges. Are they more pro-prosecution or more pro-defense? She was pretty strict. And at this time, Occupy Wall Street was going on. Let's hang these guys for the financial crisis, which the financial crisis was not insider trading. That was the mortgage-backed securities, which we talked about.
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