New York » One of the wealthiest men in America was among six financially influential people arrested by federal authorities Friday in a hedge-fund insider-trading case that prosecutors say reaped more than $20 million in illegal profits.

Raj Rajaratnam, a partner in Galleon Management and a portfolio manager for Galleon Group -- a hedge fund with up to $7 billion in assets under management -- was accused of conspiring with others to cause trades based on insider information about several publicly traded companies, including Google Inc.

At an afternoon news conference, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that the case was the largest hedge-fund case ever prosecuted and should be a "wake up call for Wall Street."

Rajaratnam, 52, was ranked No. 559 by Forbes magazine this year among the world's wealthiest billionaires, with a $1.3 billion net worth.

Born in Sri Lanka and a graduate of University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business , Rajaratnam has been described as a savvy manager of billions of dollars in technology and health-care hedge funds at Galleon, which he started in 1996. The firm is based in New York City with offices in California, China, Taiwan and India. He lives in New York.

According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Rajaratnam obtained insider information and then caused the Galleon Technology Funds to execute trades that earned

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a profit of more than $12.7 million between January 2006 and July 2007. Other schemes garnered millions more, authorities said.

A spokesman for Rajaratnam did not immediately return a phone call for comment Friday.

The timing of the arrests might be explained by a footnote in the complaint against Rajaratnam. In it, an FBI agent said he had learned that Rajaratnam had been warned to be careful, and that Rajaratnam, in response, had said that a former employee of the Galleon Group was likely wearing a "wire."

The agent said he learned from federal authorities that Rajaratnam had obtained a plane ticket to fly from Kennedy International Airport to London on Friday and to return to New York from Geneva, Switzerland, next Thursday.

Also charged in the scheme are Rajiv Goel, 51, of Los Altos, Calif., a director of strategic investments at Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel Corp.; Anil Kumar, 51, of Santa Clara, Calif., a director at McKinsey & Co. Inc., a global management-consulting firm; and Robert Moffat, 53, of Ridgefield, Conn., senior vice president and group executive at International Business Machines Corp.'s Systems and Technology Group.

The others charged in the case were identified as Danielle Chiesi, 43, of New York City, and Mark Kurland, 60, also of New York City.