The Tokyo High Court on Monday upheld a lower court ruling that a former official of a test-coaching school serve 11 years in prison for defrauding parents out of 517 million yen by pretending to offer backdoor admission deals to medical schools.

The high court dismissed an appeal by Yukio Tosa, 67, who pleaded not guilty during his trial before the Shizuoka District Court but admitted to part of the charges in the high court, and upheld the lower court ruling of last June.

Presiding Judge Kunio Harada ruled that Tosa masterminded the fraud and it is clear he had no intention of actually helping the applicants get into medical school.

According to the court, Tosa, conspiring with his wife, who has also been convicted of fraud, obtained around 325 million yen between June 1998 and March 2001 from the parents of seven applicants planning to take medical school exams by offering backdoor admissions.

Tosa headed the education headquarters department at Zenkoku Idai Seminar's Shizuoka branch. Pretending to be an executive of the nonexistent "Private Medical School Education Federation," he also defrauded the parents of four others who had failed admissions tests of around 192 million yen in 2000 and 2001, telling them their children might be admitted.