“When Steven A. Cohen’s lawyers arrived for a meeting this spring at the United States attorney’s offices in Lower Manhattan, in a Brutalist-style building tucked behind a pair of courthouses, the conference room was so packed with federal investigators that one official had to venture down the hall for additional chairs.

“The meeting was just weeks after Mr. Cohen’s hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, paid $616 million to settle two civil insider trading cases, and his lawyers were there to present a broad defense of the fund.

“But the marshaled might of law enforcement — which people briefed on the matter said were 17 officials, including representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the F.B.I., and postal inspectors as well as federal prosecutors — signaled that the government was no longer interested in just monetary settlements. Instead, after years of futile attempts to pin criminal charges on Mr. Cohen, the investigators were coalescing around a more unusual plan: indict SAC itself.”

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