DENVER (AP) – Former Qwest Communications chief executive Joe Nacchio got six years in prison and was ordered to give up all his ill-gotten gains on Friday for hiding his company’s problems from investors even as he dumped shares at a huge profit.

Federal District Judge Edward Nottingham ordered Nacchio to forfeit $52 million in assets he gained in illegal stock sales, imposed a maximum $19 million fine and ordered him to serve two years’ probation after serving his sentence.

The 58-year-old Nacchio is the latest in a string of former top-level executives to be convicted in recent years in corporate fraud scandals at companies like Enron and WorldCom.

Nacchio was convicted in April of making $52 million in stock sales at a time when he knew Qwest faced financial risk but didn’t tell investors. He had faced a maximum seven years, three months in prison.

With his attorney at his side, he stood before the judge as he was sentenced, his hands clasped firmly in front of him. He turned to look at his wife, Anne, and son Michael, and nodded slightly.

“The crimes the defendant has been found guilty of are crimes of overarching greed,” Judge Nottingham said.

Nacchio declined to testify at his sentencing hearing.

Judge Nottingham earlier denied a defense motion for an acquittal and for a new trial, dismissing claims that jurors were swayed by damaging pretrial publicity.

“This was an extraordinary jury,” he said. “In this court’s view, the verdict takes a rational view of the evidence.”

Thousands of investors lost money when Qwest Communications International Inc.’s stock price plummeted from more than $60 a share in 2000 to just $2 a share in 2002. The scandal forced Qwest, a primary telephone service provider in 14 mostly Western states, to restate $2.2 billion in revenue.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has requested court permission to begin distributing $267 million to investors who purchased Qwest stock between July 27, 1999, and July 28, 2002.

The money was collected in settlements of six lawsuits filed as a result of the agency’s investigation into Qwest’s accounting practices. The SEC hoped to begin distributing checks on Tuesday to investors who submitted valid claims.

Nacchio was indicted in December 2005, nearly three years after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the first indictments in the Qwest investigation, calling it an example of the government’s intolerance of white-collar crime.

The case grew out of the accounting scandal in which federal regulators said Qwest falsely reported fiber-optic capacity sales as recurring instead of one-time revenue between April 1999 and March 2002. They said the practices allowed the company to improperly report about $3 billion in revenue and helped it acquire former Baby Bell, U S West Inc.

Prosecutors adopted a narrow focus on insider trading against Nacchio, indicting him for 42 stock sales completed in the first five months of 2001 – a time when business unit managers warned that Qwest faced financial risk because it was increasingly relying on money from one-time sales to meet revenue targets.

A jury deliberated six days before acquitting Nacchio on 23 counts and convicting him on 19 for transactions that occurred in April and May 2001 – after Qwest released its 2001 first-quarter results but didn’t tell investors about the revenue situation.

Nacchio’s legal issues are far from over. A civil fraud case is pending against him and four other one-time Qwest executives alleging they orchestrated financial fraud that led to the scandal. A trial isn’t expected to be set until 2009.