With a producer he duped watching from the gallery, a former Long Island stockbroker was sentenced Friday to nearly three years in prison for defrauding the backers of a planned Broadway musical by pretending he knew investors who could rescue the financially struggling show.

In one of the more spectacular scandals in modern Broadway history, the former stockbroker, Mark C. Hotton, tricked the producers of “Rebecca,” a musical based on a gothic mystery novel by Daphne du Maurier, into paying him lucrative commissions and covering his expenses because they believed he was arranging $4.5 million in financing for the show. An investigation by the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, showed that Mr. Hotton’s investors were actually “deep-pocketed phantoms.”

“The offense is plainly serious,” said the judge, John G. Koeltl of United States District Court of Manhattan, before sentencing Mr. Hotton to 34 months in prison on two counts of wire fraud. Mr. Hotton had previously pleaded guilty.

Mr. Hotton declined to address the court, adding he had said all he wished to in a sealed letter to the judge. But a submission from his lawyers quoted parts of that letter, saying that their client had told the judge that his “need for quick advance fees outweighed my intention to work completely honest.”