CHICAGO — Former media mogul Conrad Black was convicted Friday of swindling the far-flung Hollinger International newspaper empire he once ran out of millions of dollars, becoming the latest in a wave of disgraced corporate executives to face possible prison time for financial fraud.

Black, 62, who once renounced his Canadian citizenship to become a member of the British House of Lords, was found guilty by a federal jury of three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice for spiriting documents out of his Toronto office in defiance of a court order.

Black was acquitted of nine other counts ranging from tax fraud to the most serious charge — racketeering. He was also acquitted of fleecing Hollinger shareholders through such perks as taking the corporate jet on a two-week vacation to the island of Bora Bora.

The three-month trial drew international media attention, heightened by the silver-haired British lord’s posh lifestyle and sometimes haughty comments. When shareholders grumbled about the cost of the Bora Bora trip, he wrote a memo saying: “I’m not prepared to re-enact the French revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility.”

Three other former Hollinger executives, John Boultbee, 62, of Victoria, British Columbia, Peter Y. Atkinson, 60, of Oakville, Ontario, and Mark Kipnis, 59, of Northbrook were also convicted of fraud charges.

Prosecutors asked Judge Amy St. Eve to have Black jailed immediately, saying he could face approximately 15 years to nearly 20 years in federal prison for the conviction. But defense attorneys said the actual sentence was likely to be much less.

In contrast to the $84 million in fraud prosecutors blamed on Black when he was indicted two years ago, the jurors found him guilty of a fraction of that — defense attorneys put the amount at $3.5 million.

Ms. St. Eve set a November 30 sentencing date, confiscated Black’s passport and ordered him to remain in the Chicago area while she considers the government’s request that she revoke his $21 million bond, partly secured by a seaside estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

A defense attorney, Edward M. Genson, argued that Black had “wanted his day in court and now wants his day on appeal” and would not run away.

“He has had his day in court,” countered prosecutor Eric H. Sussman, “and now the question is whether he will have his day of sentencing.”

Black was stony faced as he handed over the passport. When Ms. St. Eve asked if he would appear for sentencing, he said: “Absolutely.”

Black avoided reporters’ questions as he left the courthouse Friday afternoon. Black’s Canadian defense attorney, Edward Greenspan, told reporters they would appeal.

“… There are viable legal issues. We vehemently disagree with the government’s position on sentencing,” he said, reading a prepared statement.

A Chicago securities attorney who has been following the trial and was in the court for the verdict, Andrew Stoltmann, said Black can be thankful he wasn’t convicted on all counts.

“Certainly there are a whole bunch of appealable issues, but it’s unlikely that he’ll be successful,” he said.

A former federal prosecutor and Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyer, Jacob Frenkel, called it a “stunning victory” for the government and said a split verdict was the best possible outcome for the prosecution.

“It highlights for the appellate court that the jury was very thoughtful and thorough in its deliberations, separating the wheat from the chaff, identifying those counts in which the government met its burden of proof and those in which it failed to do so,” he said.

Hollinger International, based in Chicago, was at one time one of the world’s largest publisher of community newspapers as well as the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph of London and Israel’s Jerusalem Post.

At the core of the charges against Black was a strategy he arrived at starting in 1998 to sell off the bulk of the small community papers, which were published in smaller cities across America and Canada.

Black and other Hollinger executives received millions of dollars in payments from the companies that bought the community papers in return for promises that the sellers would not return to compete with the new owners.

Prosecutors said the executives pocketed the money, which they said belonged to shareholders, without telling Hollinger’s board of directors.

Jurors convicted Black in connection with two sets of non-compete payments.

One involved $2.6 million in such payments he received in exchange for a non-compete pledge made to the American Publishing Co. The company was a Hollinger subsidiary and thus Black and executives who also got such payments were effectively getting money not to compete with themselves.

The other were “supplemental payments” made in April 2001 after Hollinger executives realized there had been no non-competition money in sales of community newspapers to Horizon Publications Inc. in March 1999 and to Forum Communications Inc. in September 2000.

Realizing that no such non-competition money for them had been included in the deals, the executives ordered up “supplemental payments.” Black’s share of that money came to $285,000.

The American Publishing money and supplemental payments were covered in three counts of the indictment. The fourth count Black was convicted of involved the removal of documents from his Toronto offices after a court had ordered them frozen unless otherwise permitted by a court monitor.

Jurors saw surveillance camera pictures of Black hauling documents out of his offices and loading them in his car. His attorneys argued that there were other copies of the documents in the hands of regulators, and in any case he had eventually given them back.

The government’s star witness at the trial was Black’s partner in building the Hollinger empire over three decades, F. David Radler. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud and agreed to testify in exchange for lenient 21-month sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Black had said that he was busy with newspaper interests in Britain and eastern Canada and left most of the sales of community newspapers and non-compete arrangements to Radler. But Radler said that Black was well aware of how and why the money was being paid.