Businessman gets 20 days for prostitution

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PORTLAND, Maine, March 21 (UPI) -- A Maine businessman was sentenced to 20 days in jail Thursday for promotion of prostitution in a scandal that rocked the Portland area.

Mark Strong Sr., 57, apologized at a hearing in Cumberland County, the Kennebunk Journal reported. He was convicted March 6 of 12 counts of promoting prostitution.

Strong's wife, Julie, wept as she asked for a short sentence.

"Go easy on my husband," she said. "He clearly has learned from this experience."

Judge Nancy Mills, who also imposed a $3,000 fine, ordered Strong jailed immediately and said he must pay $80 a day for the expenses of his incarceration, The Portland Press-Herald reported. She rejected a defense request to delay his jail sentence.

Charges that a Zumba instructor in Kennebunk was also running a prostitution business out of her studio became a major story in Maine and across the country.

Strong lives in Thomaston, an old seaport about 50 miles northeast of Portland.