Free Press staff and AP

MILAN — Authorities say a man serving a 40-year sentence for his role in a international child pornography ring has died following a fight involving seven inmates at a federal detention center in southeastern Michigan.

A statement Friday from the Federal Bureau of Prisons says Christian Maire had life-threatening injuries following the "altercation" Tuesday at the Milan detention center about 50 miles southwest of Detroit and was pronounced dead.

(In December, Christian Maire sobbed in court, telling the judge: 'I am sick.' Read more here.)

Maire's drew national attention as federal prosecutors illustrated how nine men lured hundreds of teenage girls onto the dark web and convinced them to strip, masturbate and perform illicit sexual acts on a webcam.

The men even convinced some girls to cut themselves while they watched.

All nine defendants were convicted and sentenced to decades in prison, including Maire, a married father of two from New York who masterminded and ran the operation.

Details of how Maire was injured weren't immediately released, but the death was being investigated as an apparent homicide. The prison was placed on "limited operational status" with visiting suspended.

The statement says three of the other inmates involved were treated for serious injuries and two prison staff members had minor injuries.

The detention center is adjacent to the low-security Milan prison.

The porn ring used an elaborate setup to snare its victims.

The men pretended to be teenage boys using fake profiles and stolen pictures then scoured popular social media sites looking for targets. Their hunting grounds included Gifyo, Periscope, YouNow, and MyLOL.com, which describes itself as "the No. 1 teen dating site in the U.S., Australia, U.K. and Canada."

They got caught by the FBI in 2017.

The other men convicted in the ring: