PORTLAND, USA --  An offshore banking scam based in Grenada that cost thousands of U.S. and Canadian investors more than $170 million ended with federal prison sentences on Monday for four people, some who now claim to be nearly penniless themselves.

Douglas Ferguson, Laurent Barnabe, Robert Skirving and Rita Regale all were officers of the First International Bank of Grenada (FIBG), founded by former Portland mortgage banker and minister Gilbert Ziegler, who died in 2005 while awaiting trial.

First Bank was allowed to do business in Grenada by the current New National Party (NNP) government of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell.

The bank helped finance the NNP's 15-0 clean sweeps of the polls in the 1999 general elections in the Spice Isle. Based on the court ruling against the four offshore bankers, Skirving was ordered to pay more than $32 million in restitution, while Ferguson, Regale and Barnabe must repay more than $26 million.

The investigation stretched over three continents and eight years, and involved expensive cars, a yacht, a multimillion-dollar home in Las Vegas, a palace in Uganda, claims of a four-pound ruby and a shootout in Africa.

The case was prosecuted in Oregon because almost $50 million dollars raised during the scheme was funneled through a bank account in suburban Forest Grove. Federal prosecutors said the Grenada bank offered interest rates as high as 300 percent and claimed to have earned more than $12 billion in high-yield trading, which turned out to be nothing more than phony documents with forged signatures.

U.S. District Judge Garr King substantially reduced the government's sentence recommendation for Regale, 54, of Portland, citing her cooperation and ordering her to serve 18 months.

Skirving, 59, of Portland, was sentenced to eight years. Barnabe, 68, a Canadian citizen who lives in suburban Lake Oswego, was sentenced to six years and ordered to forfeit his interest in money held in a foreign bank account. Ferguson, 74, of Portland, was sentenced to nearly 4 1/2 years.