SAC Capital Redemptions $2 to $3 Billion: Exclusive

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SAC Capital Advisors

The hedge fund SAC Capital received between $2 billion and $3 billion in requests last week from investors for the return of capital, say people familiar with the matter, with the total being closer to $3 billion amid an intensifying Justice Department investigation.

SAC's mass exodus, which came as part of a standard quarterly window for capital return notices, known as redemptions, was essentially in line with expectations. Heading in to the June 3 deadline, people close to SAC said they were expecting a "significant" pullback of the roughly $4 billion in outside assets that had not yet been yanked.

As of May, the fund company managed about $14.5 billion overall, roughly $9 billion of which belongs to founder Steve Cohen and other insiders.

(Read More: SAC Capital's New Problem: Underperforming the Market)

SAC has been under fire of late as Cohen fights implications that he may have been involved in at least one alleged incident of insider trading. Cohen and the firm have said steadfastly they have done nothing wrong. But investor concerns that federal prosecutors are zeroing in on the founder or the company itself, which come amid two high-profile indictments of former SAC traders in just the past year, are obviously weighing on the hedge fund's business.

During the first quarter, outside investors redeemed $1.7 billion. Those funds, along with the close to $3 billion redeemed last Monday, will be returned incrementally over the course of 2013.

_By CNBC's Kate Kelly. Follow her on Twitter at @KateKellyCNBC.