The U.S. Attorney's office has closed the investigation against Syracuse University's former associate coach Bernie Fine, who was accused of child sex abuse, citing 'insufficient evidence' for a 'federal conviction.'

"We have concluded that the investigation has not developed sufficient credible evidence of the commission of a prosecutable offense to merit either federal charges or a referral to a district attorney's office for state prosecution," U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian said in a statement.

"As a result, we are closing our investigation."

With Hartunian's announcement of the closure of a yearlong investigation, Bernie Fine, who has been maintaining his innocence all along, can breathe a sigh of relief.

As Bloomberg points out, Fine was fired Nov. 27, 2011, in his 36th season at Syracuse, the longest tenure by any assistant college basketball coach in Division I. He was placed on paid administrative leave Nov. 18 after Syracuse City Police re-opened a case the school closed in 2005 following a four-month probe.

Former ball boys for Syracuse basket ball team Bobby Davis and Mike Lang have accused Fine of sexually molesting them in the early 1980s when they were young boys. Since then, two other men have come forward with similar allegations, but their stories were proved false.

The federal investigation included interviews with approximately 130 witnesses and a review of more than 100,000 pages of documents, including emails, financial and travel records, timesunion.com reports.

"The closure of our investigation does not constitute a determination of what did or did not happen - only that a thorough investigation has not revealed sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a federal conviction," wrote Hartunian in the statement.

Fine's lawyers, Karl Sleight, Donald Martin and David Botsford told Bloomberg that their client wants his case to be a lesson:

"The damage inflicted upon Bernie and his family is simply immeasurable," the lawyers said, according to The Associated Press. "Bernie hopes and prays that the lesson learned and remembered is that a rush to judgment has irreversible consequences."