even former traders and executives of Datek Online, a pioneer in online stock trading, agreed yesterday to pay $70 million in fines for what regulators called illegal trading and fraudulent bookkeeping during the market boom of the 1990's.

The Securities and Exchange Commission called it one of the largest securities fraud settlements ever.

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Regulators said the group of former traders and executives made tens of millions of dollars from stock fraud that went on for nearly a decade and involved taking advantage of a Nasdaq trading system that was intended to help smaller investors.

Jeffrey A. Citron, 32, Datek's former chief executive, and Sheldon Maschler, 58, the former chief trader, agreed to the largest fines, $22.5 million and $29.2 million, respectively. They also agreed to be permanently barred from the securities industry. The others paid smaller fines and penalties.

Under the terms of the settlement, Mr. Citron and Mr. Maschler acknowledged no wrongdoing.

Regulators said the former Datek executives were caught taking advantage of a system that was set up to help smaller investors have their trades executed quickly.

"They always portrayed themselves as the little guy on Wall Street," said Marc Beauchamp, executive director of the North American Securities Administrators Association, which represents state securities regulators. "But apparently they were gaming the system for the benefit of a handful of Datek executives."

Mr. Citron and Mr. Maschler were instrumental in transforming Datek from a small day-trading operation in Brooklyn into one of the nation's fastest-growing online brokers in the late 1990's. They also helped create Island E.C.N., Datek's online stock trading network that once petitioned regulators to become a full-fledged stock exchange.

Datek, which long ago distanced itself from its former day-trading operation and was recently acquired by Ameritrade, paid a $6.3 million fine a year ago to regulators to settle similar accusations of stock fraud.

Mr. Maschler, now a real estate developer, was once seen as a day trader with a history of regulatory infractions and close ties to Robert E. Brennan, the former penny-stock promoter who is banned from the securities industry and is now serving a prison sentence for failing to disclose his assets.

Mr. Citron, who joined Datek at age 17, had a more polished image than Mr. Maschler had. A former trader, he was hailed in the late 1990's as "one of the 20 most important players on the financial Web" for blending computer and stock trading skills. In 1997, at 27, he was leading one of the nation's fastest-growing companies.

At the time, Mr. Citron was bold and confident. He was building a multimillion-dollar home on the Jersey Shore. He boasted of being worth more than $100 million. He owned a Gulfstream jet and often commuted to Manhattan by helicopter.

But his fall was swift. In 1998, after federal investigators began looking into accusations of illegal trading at Datek's former day-trading unit, it canceled plans for an initial offering. A year later, Mr. Citron quit as chief. In 2000, under pressure from some Datek investors and executives, Mr. Citron and Mr. Maschler sold their majority stake in Datek to private investors for about $500 million.

Mr. Citron is now the chief executive of Vonage, a telecommunications company. Last year, Fortune magazine listed him as one of the "40 richest under 40," with a net worth of $189 million.

Last year, Datek, then the nation's fourth-largest online broker was acquired by Ameritrade for about $1.3 billion in stock; the Island E.C.N. was acquired by the Instinet unit of Reuters for about $500 million.

A spokeswoman for Ameritrade said yesterday that it would not comment because the issues involved occurred before Ameritrade acquired Datek.

Datek rose to prominence by using sophisticated software to profit from making quick and aggressive Nasdaq trades.

But federal investigators say that during much of that time Datek executives manipulated the exchange's small-order execution system, which was set up to help smaller investors who had difficulty completing trades during the market crash of 1987.