BELLEVUE (AP) — The leader of a prolific prostitution website based in Bellevue was sentenced Thursday, closing the case of a 2016 bust that shut down the operation and freed 67 sex workers.

49-year-old Charles Peters was given about 3 1/2 years in prison.

Peters was one of 33 men sentenced in the case. He was the only defendant to go to trial instead of plead guilty and the only one who stood to serve prison time.

His attorneys claimed he had no idea that running prostitution websites that served 40,000 men amounted to promoting prostitution. He was convicted of nine counts of promoting prostitution.