Harrisburg, Pa. ? Former Rite Aid Corp. chief executive Martin Grass was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday for his part in a $1.6 billion accounting scandal.

Grass, 50, also was fined $500,000 and given three years’ probation for conspiring to falsely inflate the company’s earnings and then cover up the scheme.

He apologized in court to Rite Aid, its stockholders and employees.

“For the harm caused to them, I am truly sorry,” he said.

The fraud, revealed amid a wave of corporate scandals, sent the company’s stock tumbling and forced the nation’s third-largest pharmacy chain to retroactively lower its net earnings by $1.6 billion.

Grass was forced out in October 1999 and indicted by a federal grand jury. He pleaded guilty in June on the eve of trial in a deal that required him to cooperate with prosecutors.

Officials said Grass admitted to a series of illegal activities, from backdating contracts and severance letters to misleading the company and federal investigators about a $2.6 million real-estate deal. They said he also met with employees who were called to testify before the grand jury and encouraged them to lie.

The company, founded by Grass’ father, Alex Grass, saw its stock soar under the son’s leadership. But the grand jury said that was accomplished by “massive accounting fraud, the deliberate falsification of financial statements, and intentionally false SEC filings.”

“As it turns out, I tried to do too much, too fast,” Grass told U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo on Thursday.

When the company’s finances took a turn for the worse in early 1999, he said, “I did some things to try and hide that fact.”

Martin L. Grass, former chairman and chief executive of Rite Aid Corp., left, enters federal court in Harrisburg, Pa., with one of his attorneys, Mary Spearing. Grass was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison for his part in a .6 billion accounting scandal.

“Those things were wrong. They were illegal,” he said. “I did not do them to line my own pockets.”

Rambo rejected an early plea deal that called for up to eight years in prison, because under federal sentencing guidelines he would have gotten less. A new deal called for him to serve up to 10 years in prison for conspiring to defraud and obstruct justice.

Grass’ sentence is considerably longer than those imposed on three other former Rite Aid executives sentenced this week after pleading guilty to conspiracy.

Former chief financial officer Franklyn M. Bergonzi was sentenced to 28 months in prison, former vice president Eric S. Sorkin received five months in jail and five months house arrest, and former vice president Philip Markovitz will serve a month in jail and five months house arrest.

On June 8 the man who briefly succeeded Grass as interim CEO, Timothy Noonan, will be sentenced for one count of withholding information from company investigators.

A sixth man, former Rite Aid vice chairman and chief counsel Franklin C. Brown, was the only defendant to go to trial and was found guilty by a jury in October of 10 criminal counts. No sentencing date has been set for Brown.

Rite Aid operates 3,400 stores in 28 states and the District of Columbia and has 72,500 employees.