PERTH entrepreneur Dean Scook has been sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted in the District Court over a market deception scheme involving shares in a junior explorer in 1998. Mr Scook, 56, was found guilty of 158 charges of creating, or doing something that was likely to create, a false or misleading appearance of active trading in Intrepid Mining Corporation NL during January and February 1998. Intrepid was later known as Cobra Resources NL and is now called Resource Mining Corporation Ltd, a minerals exploration company focused on exploration for nickel, cobalt, copper platinum group metals and iron ore. Mr Scook used multiple accounts through several brokers as well as a pool of traders to effect the trading in Intrepid. He was able to orchestrate the trading by monitoring the market in real time. Unbeknown to the brokers and the pool of traders, Mr Scook would arrange both sides of the transaction in order for a trade to be executed. By trading in this manner, Mr Scook was responsible for over 50 per cent of the volume of reported trades in Intrepid shares in the period, including over 80 per cent of reported trades on some days. Mr Scook’s Sydney stockbroker, Jeffrey Braysich, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment to be suspended on entering into a personal recognisance of $5,000 surety to be of good behaviour for two years. Mr Braysich was also fined $24,000. Mr Braysich, 46, was found guilty of 25 counts of creating a false or misleading appearance of active trading in Intrepid during February 1998.