District Court has jailed a former staff of Man Lung Hong Securities Limited for three years and four months for stealing client assets.

Ip Shu-kun pleaded guilty to 35 counts of theft involving $4.4 million worth of client assets today.

In December, the Securities & Futures Commission banned Ip from re-entering the industry for life. The commission found Ip had misappropriated clients' securities and monies since as early as 1991.

In attempting to conceal the misappropriation of clients' assets, he falsified bought and sold notes, stockholder's statements and stock receipts, and used his wife's account at Man Lung Hong to facilitate the misappropriation.

He failed to act in accordance with clients' order instructions, traded clients' securities without authorisation, and used the sale proceeds to conceal the shortfall of client monies.

He also changed clients' correspondence addresses to circumvent Man Lung Hong's circularisation exercise, and forged clients' signatures in the circularisation reply forms.