NEW YORK AP – A judge, saying he wanted to send a message to “quick-buck artists,” handed down stiff sentences Wednesday to two former executives and a lawyer with accounting firm KPMG for helping rich people evade more than a billion dollars in taxes.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced former KPMG executive John Larson to more than 10 years in prison; a fellow executive, Robert Pfaff, received more than eight years.