It has been reported that a federal appeal court on Friday has denied US attorney Preet Bharara’s request to reconsider its 10 December decision throwing out guilty verdicts of two fund managers.

The ruling made it harder for the US government to win insider-trading cases survived a challenge by Bharara.

The court’s judgment placed some of the Manhattan prosecutor’s biggest victories, including the conviction of SAC Capital Advisors LP’s Michael Steinberg and at least nine others, in jeopardy.

Majorly, Bharara’s years of pursuing insider traders has now set a precedent making such cases more difficult for his successors.

There are chances that Bharara might still ask the US Supreme Court to review the appeal in a long-shot bid to salvage the convictions.

The high court rejects most of such requests. The ruling came in the case of Level Global Investors LP co-founder Anthony Chiasson and ex-Diamondback Capital Management LLC portfolio manager Todd Newman. It was told that two of more than 80 defendants prosecuted in an eight-year probe by Bharara.

The two of them were convicted in 2012 for trading on shares of Dell Inc. and Nvidia Corp. in what prosecutors said was a $72 million insider scheme.

Chiasson and Newman argued they didn’t know the identity of the original sources of the tips passed to them by their analysts.

In December, a three-judge appellate panel asked the prosecutors to prove that defendants knew their tips came from someone who had a duty to keep them secret and who also got a benefit from eaking them.

“It would dramatically limit the government’s ability to prosecute some of the most common, culpable and market-threatening forms of insider trading”, Prosecutors said in decision.

The argument failed on Friday as the appeals court refused to have the ruling reconsidered by either the same three-judge panel or all of the court’s judges.