wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

The former hedge fund boss at Bear Stearns took the witness stand yesterday, in the first criminal trial of Wall Street executives related to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Greg Quental testified as a government witness against Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, who are accused of lying to investors before their hedge funds collapsed in 2007. WNYC's Lisa Chow reports.

REPORTER: Greg Quental re-read emails to the jury, from March 2007, in which the defendant Matthew Tannin said investors should be adding more money to the funds, that he was adding his own money to the funds, and that there were buying opportunities in the market.

The funds collapsed four months later, and it turns out Tannin never added any money. Quental told jurors that he didn’t check to see if Tannin was adding money, because he never knew the defendant to say something that wasn't true.

Tannin's lawyers say Quental was Tannin's boss, and had told Tannin to make the case to investors. The funds' collapse led to $1.6 billion in losses for investors. For WNYC, I'm Lisa Chow.

REPORTER: Tannin did catch a break yesterday when Judge Frederick Block ruled that the jury cannot see a personal email he wrote in 2006 expressing anxieties about work and the state of the market. Tannin had written an email to himself, in which he said, quote "we could blow up".