Ivan Boesky, stock trader convicted in insider trading scandal, dead at 87, according to reports

Ivan F. Boesky, the flamboyant stock trader whose cooperation with the government cracked open one of the largest insider trading scandals on Wall Street, has died at the age of 87.

His daughter Marianne Boesky told The New York Times on Monday that he died in his sleep, and his wife confirmed Boesky's death to The Washington Post. No cause of death was given.

The son of a Detroit delicatessen owner, Boesky was once considered one of the richest and most influential risk-takers on Wall Street. He had parlayed $700,000 from his late mother-in-law's estate into a fortune estimated at more than $200 million, hurtling him into the ranks of Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans.

But once implicated in insider trading, Boesky cooperated with a brash young U.S. attorney named Rudolph Giuliani in a bid for leniency, uncovering a scandal that shattered promising careers, blemished some of the most respected U.S. investment brokerages and injected a certain paranoia into the securities industry.