Topeka ? Securities Commissioner David Brant is proposing that the state impose tougher penalties for securities fraud.

Brant’s proposals include tougher sentences determined by a victim’s financial losses, stiffer punishments for selling securities without being registered with the state, and making “control persons” liable in civil lawsuits if they knew or should have known their employees were committing fraud.

Brant said he would take his proposals to the 2003 Legislature.

He outlined them during a news conference Monday.

“It’s time that the punishment fit the crime, particularly when financial crimes often have a devastating impact on the victims,” Brant said. “We increasingly handle serious cases where older victims have suffered substantial losses.”

Brant noted that someone convicted of a small robbery can be sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for the first offense, while a person convicted of securities fraud can be sentenced only to one year and seven months.

Under his proposals that sentence would remain in place only when the amount defrauded is less than $25,000. Penalties would increase as the fraud became greater; someone convicted of defrauding investors of $1 million or more could go to prison for five years and one month.

Brant cited two recent cases as examples of why the increased penalties are needed.

In September, a Wichita man was convicted in Sherman County of defrauding 51 investors out of $1.2 million. Last year, an Abilene broker was convicted and sentenced to 19 months in prison for selling $1.3 million in bogus investments.