Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, the two men behind Livent Inc., have each been handed multi-year prison sentences for cooking the books but are already out on bail pending their appeals, one of their defence lawyers says.

Edward Greenspan said Wednesday he has filed appeals of both the convictions and the sentences handed to the two theatre moguls.

Each man had to post $350,000 in bail.

The duo were found guilty of two counts of fraud and one count of forgery in March, for their business dealings with the now defunct company.

They were sentenced in a Toronto courtroom on Wednesday morning.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto sentenced Drabinsky to four years in prison on one fraud charge and seven years on the second. Both sentences are to be served concurrently.

For Gottlieb's part in the fraud, Benotto sentenced him to four years on the first count of fraud and six years on the second, also to be served concurrently.

The judge stayed the forgery charges for both men, saying that the facts were the same as one of the fraud counts.

While Gottlieb was the person responsible for Livent's finances, Benotto said Drabinsky was "the main person in charge."

Gottlieb, the judge said, was "caught in a wide net that was most likely meant for Drabinsky."

The pair had been accused of directing their accounting staff to improperly record expenditures in order to boost the company's financial health. The Crown argued that because of the inflated profit reports, investors ended up forking over as much as $500 million to the company that eventually went bankrupt.

Both men had pleaded not guilty to all three charges.

CTV's Scott Laurie reported that Benotto read out the reasons for their respective sentences for about 30 minutes.

The judge acknowledged that Drabinsky and Gottlieb had support from the people who wrote letters on their behalf and that they had produced some great works in Toronto.

"But no one is above the law," Benotto said. "No one gets to write their own rules."

Benotto said the two men led a company "whose corporate culture was one of dishonesty," something she said the court had a responsibility to denounce.

"Corporate fraud such as this results in tangible losses to employees, creditors and investors," Benotto said in her decision.

"It also results in less tangible, but equally significant loss to society. It fosters cynicism. It erodes public confidence in financial markets."

Laurie said that the judge pointed to a number of examples of sentences in other fraud cases, when explaining the reasons for the sentences she handed down on Wednesday.

The Crown had been seeking eight to 10 years for both Drabinsky and Gottlieb, while the defence had sought conditional sentences for their clients.

Defence lawyers Edward and Brian Greenspan had filed letters of support to the court from high-profile individuals, such as Toronto businessman Gerry Schwartz, along with family members and theatre professionals.

Livent was the company that brought the hit plays "The Phantom of the Opera," "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," "Showboat," and "Ragtime" to Toronto.

It became a publicly-traded company in 1993 and was sold to former Disney executive Michael Ovitz in 1998.

When Ovitz took over Livent, he ordered an audit of the company's books, and Drabinsky and Gottlieb left the company in August 1998. The company went bankrupt by the end of the year.

With a report from CTV's Scott Laurie and files from The Canadian Press