The Tokyo District Court sentenced a mobster to life imprisonment Wednesday for smuggling large amounts of amphetamines from North Korea in 2002 in conspiracy with others.

Besides the life term, Atsunori Fukushima, 68, was fined 10 million yen and slapped with a 966 million yen penalty -- a sum equal to the amount acquired by his criminal acts.

In a separate ruling at the same court Wednesday, accused accomplice Tsunehiko Noto, 64, was sentenced to 12 years and cohort Kiyoharu Shishikura, 51, to 11. Both were also fined 4 million yen and hit with a 457 million yen penalty for their role in the drug-running.

The verdicts came one day after a key player in the case, Osamu Gonda, 55, was also convicted by the same court and sentenced to 13 years. Gonda used his power boat to pick up the drugs after they were dropped in the sea at designated sites.

Fukushima, a senior member of an underworld group affiliated with Matsuba-kai, and the other two were convicted of conspiring with Katsuhiko Miyata, 59, who heads an affiliate of the Kyokuto-kai syndicate, in smuggling 230 kg of amphetamines in June and October 2002. Miyata's case is pending.

They had North Korean-registered freighters drop the contraband in the sea off Shimane Prefecture and later collected them, and prepared in November that year to smuggle about 237 kg of amphetamines in a similar manner.

The three had been charged with attempting to smuggle the drugs in the November 2002 case, but the judges who presided over their trials ruled Wednesday that their acts in that month constituted merely preparing to smuggle.

Fukushima allegedly played a leading role on the receiving end, while the two others, whose names were not provided, were believed to have transported and sold the drugs.

The sentence meted out to Fukushima was nearly in line with what prosecutors had demanded.