A court in San Diego, California, has seized $1.3 million from a "boiler-room" stockbroking firm that scammed millions of euros from Irish investors.

The case arose after Irish and British authorities warned the US government about the sales practices of Millennium Financial Ltd, which operated high-pressure sales techniques from offices in California, Florida and Nevada.

The Central Bank has issued three warnings about Millennium since 2000.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also launched a civil action against the company, claiming it defrauded investors of more than $20 million.

Last month, Millennium's chief executive, Mr Rodney Scott Shenhy, was jailed for 37 months after pleading guilty to 12 counts of mail and wire fraud. In May, 2002, a New York court issued an emergency restraining order against the company.

San Diego assistant US attorney Ms Faith Devine told The Irish Times she had inspected the list of 700 victims. Most were in Ireland, Britain or Switzerland.

Ms Devine said the SEC had worked closely with the Central Bank and the British Financial Services Authority.

She said that Shenhy had been on bail in relation to a separate stock fraud case when he set up Millennium and moved to Spain.

In May 2002, Irish and British authorities discovered he was operating a stock-pushing scam from Barcelona.

Millennium was promoted as an international investment adviser based in Uruguay, with offices in Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and Switzerland. As well as operating phone banks, the company also operated a mass mailing operation from Rotterdam in the Netherlands

Its brochure mentioned possible investment in legitimate, well-known US companies as a way of luring the public. However, investors were then pressurised into investing in companies that were supposedly about to float. In one case, investors were told to invest in a Florida-based company that made pre-paid phone cards, even though the company had no stock to offer.

According to court documents, Millennium's profits were laundered through offshore accounts in the Caribbean island of Nevis.

Others involved in running the company were based in tax shelters, including Guernsey, Ms Devine said. It might not be possible to extradite them to the US. One of those most closely associated with the firm, the late French-Canadian businessman John Pierre Gonyou, had a long record of fraud involvement.

Ms Devine could not release the names of the 700 known victims but said a "substantial number" had Irish addresses.