Lee Myung-hee, the widow of the former Korean Air chief Cho Yang-ho was given a suspended jail sentence on Tuesday for illegally employing a dozen maids from the Philippines by passing them off as Korean Air trainees.

The Incheon District Court also sentenced her daughter Heather Cho globally notorious for the 2014 "nut rage" scandal, to a suspended jail term on the same charge. The airline was fined 3 million won (US$2,572).

In a separate trail last month, A South Korean court issued suspended sentences to the widow and daughter of late Korean Air Chairman Cho Yang-ho for using the airline to smuggle luxury goods worth about 88 million won, including luxury clothes and bags, on 202 occasions between January 2012 and May last year by exploiting Korean Air planes, disguising them as goods being brought in for the airline.

Lee was charged with having smuggled some 37 million won (US$31,720) worth of goods, including earthenware, on 46 occasions via the airline's overseas bureaus between May 2013 and March last year. She was also indicted for having falsely reported to the customs office that the airline imported furniture worth 35 million won (US$30,000), including sofas, which she privately purchased between January-July 2014.

The Incheon District court sentenced widow Lee Myung-hee to six months in prison, suspended for a year, and fined her 7 million won (US$5,900). Lee’s daughter, Heather Cho, a former Korean Air vice president who previously spent five months in jail over a case that became known as the nut-rage incident, got a suspended sentence of eight months and a 4.8 million won fine.

The suspended sentences are the latest among a string of scandals for the chaebol family that is facing a complicated succession after the death of the Korean Air chairman in April.