TAIYUAN -- The creator of China's largest pornographic website was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday.

Related readings:  Porn dealer given 12-year jail term  Couple casts sex show online  Online sex casts lead to arrests  Thai zoo to show panda "porns"  Suzhou busy pulling down porn star posters  Porn star exits Calif. race to be with injured mom  Porn star Mary Carey demands equal time from Leno  Sex on screen: Porn or art?  Fashion goes soft porn  Jackie Chan admits acting in porn movie

Judges at the Taiyuan Intermediate People's Court handed down the sentence to Chen Hui and ordered the confiscation of 100,000 yuan (12,500 U.S. dollars).

The other eight organizers of the website were jailed for terms ranging from 13 months to ten years.

The nine were convicted of profiting from pornographic dissemination.

Apart from one who is over 50, the average age of the other eight criminals is just 23.

Chen, 28, and his accomplices started the Qingseliuyuetian (pornographic summer) website in 2004 and opened a further three porn websites, attracting more than 600,000 users.

A police source said it was difficult to know the exact illegal profits of the website because most of the money was spent or saved in foreign bank accounts.

The police found about 200,000 yuan (25,000 U.S. dollars) in the Chinese bank accounts of the nine.

A member of the public complained to city police on June 21 last year that a hospital website had changed to become the homepage of a porn website.

Police questioned the administrator of the website, Wang Jianfei, who allegedly admitted he was in charge of the "Qingseliuyuetian" Taiyuan section.

Three months later, police in the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Jilin, Liaoning, Anhui and Hubei arrested Chen and other organizers.

All the servers of "China's largest adult community" were based overseas and Chen regularly changed the website's domain name, servers and Internet provider address, the police said.

At first the four websites accepted about 200,000 registered members free of charge, but demanded 199 to 266 yuan (25 to 33 U.S. dollars) in registration fees from people who joined later.

Some paid more for a life membership. According to the police, a "top-level VIP membership" sold at 3,999 yuan (500 U.S. dollars).

Commercial space on the website sold for 1,000 to 3,000 yuan (125 to 375 U.S. dollars) per month.

On October 3 last year, when the website was closed down, the registered members exceeded 600,000 around China.

The website contained more than nine million pornographic images and articles and it had received more than 11 million clicks.