Rajaratnam heading to Massachusetts medical prison

Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading, was assigned to a federal prison medical center in Massachusetts, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Rajaratnam, 54, was ordered by US District Judge Richard Holwell to report to prison on December 5. At Rajaratanam's request, Holwell, who handed down the sentence on October 13 in Manhattan federal court, recommended the Galleon Group LLC co-founder do his time at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, where convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence.

Rajaratnam, who says he has health problems including diabetes and will likely need dialysis and an eventual kidney transplant, was instead assigned to Federal Medical Center Devens, according to the person familiar with the matter. Devens is located on the decommissioned Fort Devens military base in Ayer, Massachusetts, 39 miles (63 kilometers) west of Boston.

John Dowd, Rajaratnam's lawyer, declined to comment on the prison assignment.

Ed Ross, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman, also declined to comment, citing a policy not to disclose prison assignments before the prisoner is in custody.

Devens houses male inmates who need specialized or long- term medical or mental health care, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. It is designated as an administrative facility, which means it has inmates from different security classifications - from white collar criminals like Rajaratnam to mobsters and sex offenders.

PRISON CAMP
In addition to the medical center, Devens includes a minimum security prison camp.

Devens inmates often leave the facility to see outside specialists and to have tests and medical procedures not available in the medical center, according to Sandra Howard M.D., clinical director at Devens, who submitted an affidavit in Rajaratnam's case in September at the request of the government.

The facility has regular onsite specialists in cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, surgery, neurology and pulmonology.

Devens provides dialysis to about 85 inmates, with the capacity for as many as 125, Howard said.

Since 2004, 15 Devens inmates have received kidney transplants, performed by specialists at the University of Massachusetts, she said.

ORGAN DONOR LIST
Prisoners who receive permission from the Bureau of Prisons enter the national organ donor list on the same basis as patients outside prison, according to Howard. The prison has about 31 inmates who received transplants before they were in custody, she said.

"Mr. Rajaratnam has medical conditions that are managed routinely by the Federal Bureau of Prisons," Howard said in her affidavit.

Rajaratnam is the central figure in what US investigators called the largest hedge fund insider-trading case in US history. The probe, which leveraged the widespread use of FBI wiretaps for the first time in such an inquiry, led to convictions of more than two dozen people.

Prosecutors said the hedge fund manager made more than $72 million by using illegal tips to trade in stocks of companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Intel Corp., Google Inc., ATI Technologies Inc. and Clearwire Corp.

The case is US v. Rajaratnam, 09-01184, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).