A Yale-educated medical doctor turned hedge-fund trader is the latest casualty of the government’s continued crackdown on insider trading.

Joseph F. “Chip” Skowron III surrendered to FBI agents yesterday after he was charged with using inside information about clinical drug trials to avoid more than $30 million in losses for his former employer, FrontPoint Partners.

Skowron, who ran a $1 billion health-care fund for FrontPoint before the firm suspended him last year, allegedly got tips from Yves Benhamou, a medical expert who had an inside look into a hepatitis-C drug being developed by Human Genome Sciences Inc.

As the drug trials started to go awry in late 2007, Benhamou fed information to Skowron, who began selling his stake in Human Genome, according to the complaint.

The sales allowed FrontPoint to avoid $30 million in losses when the trials were shelved shortly thereafter, prosecutors said.

After appearing before New York magistrate judge Ronald Ellis yesterday, Skowron was released on $6 million bail, backed by his palatial Greenwich, Conn., home. His lawyer, Jim Benjamin of Akin Gump, said Skowron intends to plead not guilty.

“We look forward to responding to the allegations more fully in court at the appropriate time,” Benjamin said.

Also yesterday, FrontPoint agreed to fork over $33 million, including disgorgement and interest, to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle related charges.

Benhamou, who was charged in November, pleaded guilty yesterday and is cooperating with the government.

In February 2008, less than two months after his trades, Skowron allegedly told Benhamou to lie to FrontPoint’s lawyers about the tips on the Albuferon drug trial. FrontPoint’s lawyers wanted to interview Benhamou because they were contacted by the SEC about the oddly timed trades.

A few days later, Skowron met Benhamou in a Boston hotel and gave him “a bag containing two stacks” of money, which Benhamou refused to accept. By April, however, Benhamou had taken $10,000 in cash from Skowron in a hotel bar in Milan, the complaint said. kwhitehouse@nypost.com