Tom Hardin previously spent much of his career as a hedge fund equity analyst. In 2008, as part of a cooperation agreement with the United States Department of Justice, Mr Hardin assisted the US government in understanding how insider trading occurred in the investment management industry. Known as ‘Tipper X’, he became one of the most prolific informants in securities fraud history, helping to build over a quarter of the individual criminal cases in ‘Operation Perfect Hedge’, a Wall Street house cleaning campaign that morphed into the largest insider trading investigation of a generation.

Since resolving his case in 2015, Mr Hardin was invited by the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) in New York City to speak to their rookie agent class in 2016, and he is now an international corporate trainer and keynote speaker on conduct risk, compliance and behavioural ethics from his former frontline perspective. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics, with a Finance concentration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

In frank detail, Mr Hardin will share his story of crossing from unethical to illegal activity as a young professional, and the psychological traps that can pull individuals into a spiral of rationalisation as that line is crossed. He will share stories about his double life as an undercover FBI informant. Mr Hardin will provide takeaways from his past three years of serving as a compliance trainer for over 150 global investment funds, and offer key indicators that identify conduct risk in an organisation.