A Volkswagen AG executive who pleaded guilty for his role in the company’s $30 billion emissions cheating scandal was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Bloomberg says that Oliver Schmidt, VW’s compliance liaison with U.S. regulators, pleaded guilty in August to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and another of violating the Clean Air Act.

(Read “VW Scandal: When Good Engineers Do the Wrong Thing.”)

Federal prosecutors sought the maximum of seven years. Schmidt reportedly asked U.S. District Judge Sean Cox to limit his sentence to 40 months, saying he’d been coached to lie about emissions by his bosses.

“I only have myself to blame,” Schmidt was reported as saying before Cox handed down the sentence. “I accept the punishment.”

Cox sentenced Schmidt to 60 months for the first count and 24 months for the second count, to run consecutively. He was also fined $400,000.

“In my opinion, you were a key conspirator, responsible for the cover-up in the United States,’’ the judge was quoted as saying.

Volkswagen has already incurred about $30 billion in costs following its September 2015 admission that it outfitted about 11 million diesel cars worldwide with a defeat device, embedded software that allowed the vehicles to recognize when they were being tested in laboratory conditions, and to reduce emissions to meet acceptable levels.