LOS ANGELES – A man who hosted a hip-hop themed Playboy Channel program was sentenced today to more than 11 years in federal prison for his role in a ring that used women posing as models to smuggle Ecstasy.

Kenneth Cecil Francis III, who featured hip-hop stars on his program “Buckwild,” was arrested in May 2006 at Los Angeles International Airport when he arrived from a trip to Europe with Snoop Dogg, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said.

Francis, 38, who has been jailed since then, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to import Ecstasy.

Authorities have said that in 2000 and 2001, the ring in which Francis took part smuggled hundreds of thousands of Ecstasy tablets from Europe into the United States.

The female couriers told authorities they had been instructed that they were smuggling diamonds, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cheryl Murphy said.

In reality, the gift-wrapped packages they carried contained as many as 65,000 tablets of the club drug, which were later sold in Los Angeles and New York, authorities said.

The ring was able to smuggle “significant quantities” before the scheme was uncovered, according to Kevin Kozak, the head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations office in Los Angeles.

Before he was sentenced, Francis told U.S. District Judge Manuel Real that he “got involved in this whole drug-smuggling conspiracy by wanting to start my own business, which was a modeling business.”

He said he originally thought the models were actually going to Europe to do photo shoots, but that he later learned about the smuggling.

Real appeared unswayed, and imposed the 135-month term with little comment.

Attorneys for Francis were seeking a much shorter prison term of 51 months.

Outside court, one of his lawyers, Kiana Sloan-Hiller, said Francis will appeal the sentence.

The investigation began in 2001 when one of the couriers was stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after arriving on a flight from Amsterdam.

Prosecutors say the leader of the ring was Ronald Joseph Samuel, who was editor-in-chief of the hip-hop magazine UNleased. Samuel has pleaded guilty in the case and is awaiting sentencing, Murphy said.

Seven other defendants in the case have been sentenced to terms ranging from 37 to 109 months, the prosecutor said.