Three current and former executives of Mobile-based shipbuilder Austal USA were indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday in connection with an accounting fraud scheme that misled investors about the company’s financial condition for three years, prosecutors announced Friday.

The executives — former President Craig Perciavalle, Austal’s 52-year-old Joseph Runkel, 54; the company’s current director of financial analysis; and William Adams, the 63-year-old former director of the Littoral Combat Ships program — were each charged in federal court in Mobile with conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution, five counts of wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution.

Attorneys for all of the defendants could not immediately be reached for comment on the charges.

From roughly 2013 through at least around July 2016, the executives and their co-conspirators allegedly conspired to mislead shareholders in Austal’s parent company, Australia-based Austal Limited, and investors about Austal USA’s finances, prosecutors said.

The executives allegedly artificially reduced and suppressed an account metric known as “estimate at completion,” or EAC, in relalation to multiple Littoral Combat Ships that Austal was building for the U.S. Navy.

The manipulation led to Austal Limited’s earnings being falsely overstated, prosecutors claimed, and the scheme helped maintain and increase the share price of Austal Limited’s stock. When higher costs were eventually disclosed to financial markets, the stock price was negatively impacted and Austal Limited wrote down more than $100 million.

“We allege that Austal USA’s executives manipulated its financial results, causing harm to U.S. investors in the securities of its parent company, Austal Limited,” said Jason Burt, regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Denver Regional Office. “As the complaint articulates, if the defendants had not fraudulently manipulated the cost estimates, Austal Limited would have missed, by wide margins, analyst consensus estimates for EBIT [earnings before interest and tax.]”

Perciavalle, Runkel and Adams face 30 years in federal prison for the conspiracy count and each count of wire fraud affecting a financial institution, and 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud.