A former hedge fund trader know as "Octopussy" was found guilty of orchestrating an insider-trading scam on Monday in the latest victory for US prosecutors cracking down on insider dealing on Wall Street.

After five days of deliberation a New York jury found Zvi Goffer, 34, guilty of 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. His brother Emanuel Goffer, 32, and Michael Kimelman, 40, another trader at their firm Incremental Capital, were each convicted of conspiracy and two counts of securities fraud. The convictions carry a maximum possible prison sentence of 25 years for each man.

Goffer was a former trader at Galleon Group, whose founder Raj Rajaratnam was convicted on separate insider dealing charges last month after one of the government's biggest-ever insider trading cases. Both cases are part of an ongoing investigation into insider dealing on Wall Street.

Prosecutors alleged that Goffer was the ringleader of the conspiracy and paid nearly $100,000 to informants in exchange for the confidential information about upcoming mergers and acquisitions. The US authorities nicknamed him "Octopussy," in a reference to the 1983 James Bond film starring Roger Moore, "because he had arms in so many sources of information", according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission complaint.

During the trial the jury heard dozens of secretly recorded wiretaps and recordings by a cooperating witness. The prosecution had already secured guilty verdicts from many of the other members of Goffer's insider dealing ring.

Four cooperating witnesses who have pleaded guilty to criminal charges testified for the prosecution, including Brien Santarlas, a former lawyer for law firm Ropes & Gray. Santarlas said that he and another of the firm's former lawyers passed non-public information about their firm's clients to Jason Goldfarb, a private-practice lawyer and childhood friend of Goffer's. In April Goldfarb pleaded guilty to charges he had sold confidential information about corporate acquisitions to Goffer.

The scam involved insider tips on deals including a failed takeover of the computer network equipment maker 3Com by Bain Capital and Huawei Technologies Co, and the private equity firm TPG Capital's takeover of Canadian drug company Axcan Pharma.

Goffer used disposable phones to share confidential information with his network and destroyed SIM cards to cover his tracks. Prosecutors tapped his phones and used a cooperating witness to record incriminating conversations with Goffer and others. Goffer's lawyers argued the prosecution had taken pieces of conversation out of context and had not proved their case.

The convictions were made in the same courthouse that convicted Rajaratnam, who is scheduled to be sentenced on 29 July, last month.