Two men and a woman, aged 33 to 42, have been jailed for up to 17 months by the District Court for a $32 million securities fraud.

The trio, staff of a liquidated brokerage house, unlawfully sold clients' shares entrusted in the brokerage through a number of securities accounts opened in their relatives' names between January 2000 and May 2002. The majority of the proceeds were deposited into bank accounts of the defendants' relatives and channeled back to them.

The Securities & Futures Commission referred the case to Police in May 2002. The three were arrested and charged for theft, false accounting and dealing with property known or believed to represent the proceeds of an indictable offence last February.