NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Sixteen former New York stockbrokers were sentenced this week and ordered to pay fines for their roles in defrauding thousands of U.S. investors of millions of dollars, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said Wednesday.

The sentencing in Manhattan federal court involved workers at Sterling Foster & Co., a Melville, N.Y.-based stock brokerage firm that caught the attention of federal securities regulators as early as 1996.

The U.S. for the Southern District of New York, James B. Comey, said the 16 men were ordered to pay $15.7 million in restitution to the victims of the offenses, in amounts ranging from $75,411 to $1.3 million per defendant. They were sentenced to as much as 33 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet.

The scam served as some of the inspiration for the movie "Boiler Room," a 2000 movie about small-time stock manipulators, Dow Jones reported last year.

According to an indictment filed in February 2000, the defendants engaged in a scheme to defraud thousands of customers of Sterling Foster in connection with the public offerings securities issued by six companies. The brokerage firm operated from 1994 to 1997.

In connection with the scheme, the defendants concealed excessively high charges from their customers, employed "bait and switch" tactics, in which the defendants induced customers to purchase "blue-chip" and other non-speculative investments, and then switched the customers' investments into other stocks, Comey said.

They also used high-pressure sales techniques, including scripted sales pitches containing material misrepresentations and misleading omissions, and refused to execute customers' orders to sell certain stocks, Comey said.

Prosecutors say the men focused on six so-called house stocks, whose prices they manipulated.

"When the Sterling Foster brokers ceased their manipulative tactics, the prices of each of the house stocks plummeted, leaving investors with tens of millions of dollars in losses," according to the U.S. attorney's press release. "The thousands of victims of the Sterling Foster scheme included many elderly and retired persons, some of whom lost almost all of their life savings in investments in the house stocks."

"This was a blatant and egregious fraud that caused enormous injuries to thousands of investors around the country," Comey said. "In some cases, life savings were wiped out. This prosecution should send a strong message that securities professionals who cheat their clients simply to line their own pockets will be vigorously prosecuted and punished."

In February 1997, the SEC filed a civil complaint charging Sterling Foster, a registered broker-dealer, and four individuals, including the firm's president, with illegally obtaining $75 million from investors by using boiler room sales practices and other fraudulent conduct in connection with the sale of six companies.

Earlier, in 1996, the National Association of Securities Dealers accused Sterling Foster and 15 of its officials and brokers of making $51 million in illicit profit from three IPOs.

The men sentenced were Andrew Tursi, James Corcoran, Joseph Ferrante, Michael Cohn, Charles Distefano, Dennis Rueb, William Scuteri, Scott Siegel, David Abish, Donald Turney, Michael MacCaul, Mario Rodreguez, Christopher Betts, Mark Charvat, Stephen Gourley, and Paul Feeny.

The U.S. attorney's office, which said all 16 defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted at a trial earlier this year, did not immediately have details on the men's ages or places of residence.