(Reuters) - The top prosecutor in central Michigan’s Ingham County was arrested on Monday and charged with 15 criminal counts, including felony pandering and multiple prostitution misdemeanors, the state’s attorney general said.

Stuart Dunnings, 63, has been the elected chief prosecutor of the county, which includes the capital city Lansing, for close to two decades. He was being held at the Ingham County Jail and was awaiting arraignment.

The charges against Dunnings came out of a 2015 federal investigation of human trafficking and prostitution, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement.

Schuette said Dunnings has been an outspoken advocate for ending human trafficking and prostitution, even as he allegedly used escort sites to find multiple prostitutes and pay for sex hundreds of times in three counties between 2010-2015.

“Furthermore, evidence showed that Dunnings also allegedly induced a woman to become a prostitute who had not previously been one, resulting in the charge of pandering, a 20-year felony,” Schuette’s statement said.

Charges were filed in four different courts in three counties. They include counts of willful neglect of duty for blatantly violating the law when he was a prosecutor.

Dunnings faces a sentence of as many as 26-1/2 years if found guilty of all of the charges.

Deputy Chief Assistant Prosecutor John Dewane, who is handling media inquiries for the prosecutor’s office, has not responded to a request for comment. No attorney has been identified for Dunnings.

The federal investigation that led to charges against Dunnings also led to federal human trafficking charges against Tyrone Smith, the alleged leader of a prostitution ring that worked across state borders. Smith pleaded guilty in November and awaits sentencing on three counts of sex trafficking.

As lead prosecutor, Dunnings cracked down on prostitutes and johns, according to the Lansing State Journal. In 2001 his office began imposing harsher sanctions such as charging prostitutes and clients with felonies on third offenses, and impounding johns’ vehicles.