Three young men convicted of kidnapping and confining the son of a millionaire Vancouver businessman will find out Wednesday how long they'll spend in prison.

In a plot that was as complex as it was inept, university student Graham McMynn was snatched at gunpoint from his car near his family's posh south Vancouver home in April 2006 as he and his fianc�e were driving to university.

A massive police operation involving hundreds of officers climaxed in McMynn's rescue 10 days later and the arrest of half a dozen people.

Alleged ringleader Anh The Nguyen and cohort Jose Hernandez, convicted in Oct over of kidnapping and forcible confinement, could face up to life in prison, while Sam Tuan Vu could get a maximum 10 years for his part in confining McMynn.

Two other accused -- Vu's brother Van Van Vu and Joshua Ponicappo -- were acquitted, and a juvenile also charged in the case is set to go on trial next month.

McMynn, who now works for software giant Microsoft Corp. in the United States, was moved among three Vancouver-area homes.

He was initially kept naked and blindfolded and confined to a closet.

Though he never saw his abductors' faces, McMynn was able to remember some of their voices and other things that helped police and prosecutors build a case against them.

But the key to solving the case came at the moment he was grabbed.

While his fianc�e Jacklin Tran had her cell phone taken by the kidnappers, she was able to memorize the licence plate of their car as it sped away.

McMynn and Tran have since married.

A clumsy mistake

A passerby called police, who quickly traced the licence number to a rental car from a suburban Vancouver agency.

Investigators caught an incredible break as they questioned a clerk at the car-rental office.

One of the kidnappers called to say he had to retrieve a cell phone charger from another car they had rented.

Police were staked out at the agency when he showed up and leveraged their toehold on the suspected kidnappers' identity into a complete picture of the gang and their whereabouts.

A co-ordinated surveillance operation involving police in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland and wiretaps on the gang's cell phones helped reveal their hideouts.

Police mounted simultaneous raids and found McMynn unharmed in the basement suite of a Surrey home.

A terrifying ordeal

McMynn spent much of his captivity in terror.

He testified at the kidnappers' B.C. Supreme Court trial that at one point he was threatened with a gun to his head and later his captors talked about cutting off his hand.

He told the court one kidnapper told him they had been hired by another group to grab him but were not responsible for negotiating a ransom.

No ransom demand was ever received, despite a televised plea by McMynn's parents asking to be contacted. Police say it's not clear if there ever was a second group.

The Crown's case against the five accused was largely circumstantial, based on intercepted phone conversations, testimony of associates and DNA tying them to locations were McMynn was held.

But defence lawyers argued that just because their clients had been present at those places did not mean they took an active part in his abduction or confinement.

But Justice Arne Silvermen found there was enough evidence against three of the men -- all in their twenties -- to find them guilty.

McMynn's father, Robert McMynn, who owns a bus-leasing company, said that while police were satisfied with the outcome, he felt all five should have been convicted.

Since his testimony almost a year ago, the kidnap victim has stayed largely out of the spotlight.

After the convictions, McMynn did one television interview in exchange for a $5,000 donation to the Vancouver Police Foundation.