An appellate court has handed a 40-year prison term against the head of the now-defunct Optimus Asset Management for investment fraud. 

The Seoul High Court on Friday slapped the sentence on former Optimus CEO Kim Jae-hyun, which adds 15 years to an earlier ruling by a lower court. 

It also upheld a 500 million won fine and a forfeiture of over 75 billion won stipulated in the initial sentence. 

The court also handed down harsher penalties for his accomplices, including a 20-year prison term for the asset management firm’s second largest shareholder Lee Dong-yeol and 15 years behind bars for board member Yoon Seok-ho. 

The appeals court accepted some of the charges against the accused that had been previously dismissed by the lower court and also imposed heavier penalties on existing crimes.

Kim and others were indicted for causing hefty losses to some one-point-three trillion won solicited from investors, placing funds in risky assets and entities instead of relatively safer public institutions as they had promoted.