Updated

A former hedge fund portfolio manager charged with engineering a record-setting inside trade scheme has pleaded not guilty to insider trading charges.

Authorities say Mathew Martoma persuaded a medical professor to leak secret data from an Alzheimer's disease drug trial. Investigators say it helped him earn more than a quarter-billion dollars in illegal profits.

Martoma appeared Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. He remains free on bail.

He was arrested in November at his $2 million Palm Beach County, Fla., home on securities fraud and conspiracy charges.

He is a former portfolio manager at an affiliate of a Stamford, Conn.-based firm owned by Steven A. Cohen, one of the world's richest men.

Martoma is the fourth person associated with SAC Capital to be arrested on insider trading charges in the past four years.