"Today, justice looked Mr. Kumar in the face and held him accountable for presiding over one of the largest accounting fraud schemes on record," Mershon said. "His deliberate misstatements of over $2 billion of Computer Associates' revenue caused an elevation of the company's stock price, but when the scheme collapsed, no one fell harder than the investors who made good faith purchases of the company's stock."

The losses to CA's shareholders from the illegal accounting actions amounted to more than $400 million, according to the government. The defendants admitted that they inflated the quarterly revenue and earnings of the company by keeping its books open past their normal quarterly ending dates. That made it look like the company had met or exceeded its quarterly revenue projections, when in fact the revenue had actually fallen short of those targets.

Kumar pleaded guilty in April to all eight federal charges against him, including securities fraud, obstruction of justice and perjury.

He could have received a maximum of 90 years in prison based on the statutory maximums under the law, the U.S. Attorney's Office spokeman said.

Stephen Richards, CA's former worldwide sales chief, also pleaded guilty to identical charges in April and is still awaiting sentencing. His sentence date has not been set, the spokesman said.