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By LARRY NEUMEISTER
The Associated Press

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NEW YORK - Two attorneys and Wall Street professionals were among 14 people charged Thursday in a widening $53-million insider trading case that has snared one of America's richest men and shown white collar suspects to be using the coverup tactics of drug dealers.

The actions raise to 20 the number who have been charged in the case first disclosed last month with the arrests of Galleon Group founder and hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam and five others.

At the time, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the first arrests "a wake-up call for Wall Street."

"Today the alarm bells have only grown louder," he said at a news conference Thursday.

Bharara said the defendants borrowed a "page from the drug dealer's play book" by using anonymous hard-to-trace prepaid cellphones to dodge detection by law enforcement. He said they also discussed falsifying company files to make it appear trades weren't based on secrets.

"When sophisticated business people begin to adopt the methods of common criminals, we have no choice but to treat them as such," he said.

Two tactics prosecutors routinely use in drug cases - confidential informants and court-authorized wiretaps of phones - were used in the insider trading probe on a scale wider than ever before.

The complaints also described FBI agents trailing suspects as they do in drug cases to spot them passing money. Court papers said agents observed cash appearing to be delivered in "an item that appeared to be approximately the size of a VHS tape."

Bharara said total profits alleged by prosecutors was $40 million while the Securities and Exchange Commission raised the total to $53 million, saying it includes millions in profits not described in the criminal complaints.