Federal prosecutors charge SAC Capital hedge fund with criminal fraud

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors on Thursday unveiled criminal fraud charges against billionaire Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors LP, capping a nearly seven-year probe into one of Wall Street's most renowned firms.

The indictment accused SAC and various affiliates of four counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. Cohen was charged last week in a civil case by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the hedge fund said it would fight the charges.

It said that from roughly 1999 to 2010, SAC obtained inside information on publicly traded companies, and traded on that information to boost returns and fees.

The indictment said the scheme involved "systematic insider trading" that enabled SAC to generate hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profits and avoided losses.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter, Matthew Goldstein and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Grant McCool)