MONTREAL — Montreal ad executive Paul Coffin, who bilked the federal government of more than $1.5 million in sponsorship funds, should go to prison instead of serving his sentence at home, the Crown argued Thursday.

Coffin pleaded guilty last May to 15 counts of fraud related to the sponsorship program and received a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community.

It was a crime that "shocked" the public, said Crown prosecutor Francois Drolet, adding the sentence will not serve as a deterrent to others.

"Render the sentence that should have been rendered," Drolet told the panel of three Quebec Court of Appeal justices.

The Crown has asked for a 34-month jail term.

But Coffin's lawyers argued the trial judge saw up close the former businessman's remorse.

"The Crown wants to make Paul Coffin the poster boy for this type of infraction," one of his lawyers, Raphael Schachter, told the court. "That is wrong in fact and it's wrong in law."

As part of the original sentence, Coffin had to forfeit his passport and had a 9 p.m. curfew on weeknights. He was also ordered to lecture students at McGill University on business ethics.

Coffin has been humiliated and lost all credibility, Schachter told the court. He's financially ruined and spent three years in the middle of a media feeding frenzy.

The appeals court reserved its decision.

The sponsorship program was designed to promote national unity in Quebec after the narrow federalist victory in the 1995 sovereignty referendum but a public inquiry found that about $150 million of the $355 million earmarked for the program went to Liberal-friendly ad agencies and other middlemen.

Part of that cash flowed back to the Quebec wing of the federal Liberals -- $800,000 in official donations and more than $1 million in under-the-table kickbacks.

From 1997 to 2002 Coffin's Montreal communications firm received $1.6 million from the program for contracts on which little, if any, work was actually done.

He was one of three people charged in the scandal, including former bureaucrat Chuck Guite and fellow ad man Jean Brault.

Guite's trial on five fraud charges is to begin May 2 with jury selection. Brault, who pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud also totalling $1.6 million, will be sentenced May 5.

Both face a conspiracy charge that will be dealt with separately.