Oops, they missed it again: SEC had chance to nab Rajaratnam in 1998

The

Wall Street Journal has done a public service by getting its hands on court records in the case of Galleon Holdings founder Raj Rajaratnam, who is currently walking around on $100 million bail. He's no Bernie Madoff, who stole $60 billion from his investors in a Ponzi scheme. Rajaratnam allegedly paid for inside information and traded on it -- a far more subtle form of stealing.

But in the cases of both Madoff and Rajaratnam, the Securities and Exchange Commission knew about their alleged nefarious acts for at least a decade before charging them. Bruce Watson posted on Madoff's long history of evading the SEC's weak efforts to stop him. And the Journal's reporting on how Intel (INTC) caught its employee, Roomy Khan, calling and faxing sales reports into Rajaratnam is revealing.