Jon Horvath, a former analyst who pleaded guilty to insider trading charges last year and faces up to 45 years in prison, told jurors he is cooperating with the government in hopes that he will not get anything close to the maximum prison term.

"I'm hoping to avoid jail time," Horvath, 44, said.

Steinberg is the first employee of SAC to face trial in the long-running investigation of Cohen's hedge fund that resulted in its $1.2 billion plea deal earlier this month.

Steinberg, 41, faces five counts of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud on charges he traded in 2008 and 2009 in Dell Inc and Nvidia Corp based on inside information.

Prosecutors say the information came from Horvath, who admitted in September 2012 to being a member of what prosecutors call a "corrupt circle" of Wall Street analysts who swapped tips for their hedge funds to trade upon.

Horvath is one of six SAC employees to plead guilty to charges arising out of a broad crackdown on insider trading being pursued by the FBI and Manhattan federal prosecutors.

Horvath, who worked from 2006 through 2011 at SAC division Sigma Capital Management, admitted last year that he had received information related to Dell's August 2008 earnings and Nvidia's May 2009 earnings ahead of any public announcement.

In both cases, Horvath admitted to providing the information to Steinberg, who at the time he didn't name. The hedge fund then executed trades based on that information, he said.

During his testimony on Tuesday, Horvath only briefly discussed the trades in Dell and Nvidia. But he did discuss how he came to work for Steinberg and said they discussed how Horvath formed his stock recommendations.

"He frequently asked me where the information came from if I didn't volunteer it," Horvath said.

Horvath's testimony, which will continue Wednesday, is expected to be key in the government's prosecution of Steinberg.

"This entire case comes down to what Jon Horvath is now claiming about Michael Steinberg," Barry Berke, Steinberg's lawyer, said during his opening statement last week.

Horvath, who was born in Sweden and raised in Canada, said he came to SAC via a recruiter in 2006, after working at a technology hedge fund at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in San Francisco.

He testified to committing one other crime, when he was a teenager in Canada, saying he stole a "handful of prescription drugs" from a pharmacy he worked at. The charge was later expunged, and Horvath, who is in the United States on a Green Card, said he never told U.S. immigration officials about it.

Horvath's testimony followed earlier testimony in the day by Jesse Tortora, a former analyst at hedge fund Diamondback Capital Management who is also cooperating with prosecutors, and John Casey, a compliance officer at SAC.

Casey testified that SAC had annual and periodic training sessions where it warned employees about insider trading, which documents displayed in court showed Steinberg and Horvath attended.

He said SAC also would at times restrict trading in stocks for various reasons, including if employees alerted compliance officers they had material non-public information on a company. Casey recalled Steinberg asking about the restricted stock list "a half dozen" times.

The case is U.S. v. Steinberg, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-cr-00121.