LONDON (AP) — A trucking company boss who claimed he believed he was smuggling alcohol into Britain was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison for his role in a human trafficking ring that left 39 Vietnamese migrants suffocating in a shipping container in 2019.

Caolan Gormley was the last of 11 people to be convicted of human smuggling in London. Five of the suspects were convicted of manslaughter.

Gormley, 26, from Armagh, Northern Ireland, was convicted on Monday of conspiracy to aid illegal immigration by a jury that deliberated for just over an hour at the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey.

Judge Richard Marks said Gormley “succumbed to temptation and greed” in the lucrative smuggling business.

Gormley claimed he was getting up to 3,500 pounds ($4,420) per truckload, the judge said, but there was evidence that people were paying up to 22,500 pounds ($28,418) each for what was described as “VIP service” was billed.

“Without these deaths, I have no doubt that this illegal importation of illegal immigrants would have continued, as would your involvement,” Marks said.

Gormley played a role in three migrant transports from mainland Europe to the United Kingdom, prosecutors said. One trip ended with passengers seen jumping from the back of a truck and being chased away from waiting vehicles near Orsett, England. Another was intercepted by French officials, allowing the driver and migrants through.

Some of these migrants are believed to have later boarded the fateful shipping container, which left Belgium on October 22 and landed on the English coast the next day, with all 39 people on board dead.

As the temperature inside the container rose above 38.5 °C (100 °F), the desperate people struggled to breathe and sent messages and recordings to their loved ones saying they thought they were dying.

About half of the fatalities came from Nghe An province in north-central Vietnam. The 28 men, eight women and three children were between 15 and 44 years old. They included a bricklayer, a manicure technician, an aspiring beautician and a college graduate. A married couple was found lying next to each other.

“Every person in that caravan had left behind a family,” Detective Chief Inspector Louise Metcalfe said. “They were promised safe passage to our shores and were lied to. Instead they left them to die.”

Others involved in the smuggling received sentences ranging from 10 months – for one suspect who helped migrants reach Britain safely – to decades in prison. The truck driver was sentenced to 13 years in prison, while one of the ringleaders, Ronan Hughes from Ireland, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and his co-conspirator Gheorghe Nica from Romania received the harshest sentence – 27 years.

Another 18 people were convicted in Belgium, where the Vietnamese ringleader was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“However, these results do not change the overwhelming sense of loss and sadness,” Metcalfe said. “The family of 22-year-old Dang Huu Tuyen… I believe she spoke for all of our families when she said, ‘Our hearts are broken’.”