The Supreme Court put the final seal Thursday on a 10-year prison sentence imposed on Upper House member Tatsuo Tomobe for fraud, court officials said.

The top court threw out Tomobe's challenge last Friday to its decision in late May to turn down his appeal against a Tokyo High Court ruling handed down on Dec. 20.

The high court had upheld a lower court ruling that, from June 1994 through November 1996, Tomobe defrauded 35 people out of 660 million yen through an investment scheme operated by Orange Kyosai Kumiai, a mutual aid society under Tomobe's control. Thursday's final ruling by the Supreme Court also means that Tomobe will lose his Diet post, in line with the Diet Law and the Public Office Election Law, court officials said.

This marks the first time that a Diet member has lost his or her Upper House seat on the basis of the two laws, and Tomobe now faces the heaviest punishment ever imposed on a lawmaker in the postwar era.

His motion objecting to the top court's decision to turn down his appeal was the last option open to him.

Tomobe has maintained throughout that he never intended to defraud anybody, and he has pledged to return the money he collected.

He refused to resign from the Diet even after an Upper House resolution in April 1997 called on him to give up his seat following his arrest Jan. 29 the same year.

He has always insisted that resignation constitutes an admission of guilt.

While Tomobe has been held in a detention house for four years and four months since his arrest, he has received salary and other miscellaneous payments of more than 150 million yen from the nation's coffers.

He is also expected to receive a summer bonus.