The Danielle Chiesi way to pick up Wall St secrets

How hard is it to get executives to divulge corporate secrets? Apparently not hard at all - if you wear short skirts and low-cut tops. That's the conclusion drawn from an FBI probe into the alleged insider-trading activities of Danielle Chiesi, one of 19 charged in the Raj Rajaratnam/Galleon Group fraud case.

Authorities say Chiesi, 44, a former analyst at New Castle Funds, a small New York hedge fund, used her feminine attributes to solicit Information and then pass it on to hedge fund managers like Rajaratnam.

If the FBI is correct, then the blonde, blue-eyed former teenage beauty queen appears to have found it remarkably easy to pry information from technology executives. One ploy, reports Bloomberg, was to go bar-hopping with a group, and then peel someone off to talk to on the dance floor. In the early 90s, at a different firm, she was known for showing up to work in a tight red suit with red fishnet stockings.

"It amazes me that grown, wealthy, successful, hard-working men fell for that," says Deborah Stapleton, an investor relations executive. Chiesi was proud of her network, too. "She bragged about her contacts in public," says Stapleton. "She was like a teenager who wanted everyone to know she knew some rock star."

Chiesi, one of only two women charged in the Galleon case - the largest insider-trading case to be bought since the Ivan Boesky affair in the 1980s - became involved with Rajaratnam at a conference five years ago. "They enjoyed the bull market together," reports Bloomberg.

But Chiesi's partying seems to have taken a toll. In photographs taken outside FBI headquarters in Manhattan on October 16, her blonde hair is cut short and she appears the worse for wear. Prosecutors asked a judge to require her to undergo drug testing and treatment as a condition of bail. Her lawyer says she intends to plead innocent. Rajaratnam, who is liquidating his hedge funds, has also denied wrongdoing. ·