Most Hedge Funds don't disclose how much they are leveraged, but most investment banks currently are somewhere between 8:1 and 12:1 levered. Bear Stearns was at about 10:1 when it blew up. There are some hedge funds operating at about 20X leverage but that may applies exclusively to Forex trading and arbitrage since they have the smallest moves to make a profits. But Hedge Funds have notorious history - the famous LTCM fund which blew up had 35:1 leverage and they nearly destroyed the US bond markets single handedly. They had an equity of $4.7 billion, leverage of $125 billion and dereatives position of $1.25 trillion!!
The appropriate amount of leverage to use is one of the hardest things to find out since it depends on the market, the volatility, the economic environment, the liquidity, the spreads in the market, and a whole host of other issues. Generally it is believed that most funds and traders operate at more than 15X leverage.
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