ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis resident previously convicted of child sex crimes appeared in federal court on Thursday and admitted seeking child pornography online.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said James Rankin, 47, admitted communicating with individuals he believed to be underage girls and requesting explicit images from them.

Rankin pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of child pornography and one count of transfer of obscene material.

In January 2023, detectives with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in California were conducting an undercover operation into child exploitation when they encountered Rankin.

Rankin believed he was messaging a 14-year-old and steered the conversation to the social media app Whisper. Ranking admitted sending a picture of his genitals to this individual and asking for sexually explicit pictures of her in return. They also discussed him going to California to pick her up.

Ranking also told the court that he kept child porn on his cell phone and had sought more illicit photos from minors in conversations via the Whisper app.

Rankin was previously convicted of statutory rape of a minor under 14 in Greene County, Missouri, in 2021 and sentenced to five years in prison. He’d also been convicted in 2017 of endangering the welfare of a child and domestic assault in Christian County for engaging in sexual contact with a child under 17.

At the time of this incident, Rankin had been released on parole and was living in a residential re-entry center.

Rankin is scheduled to be sentenced on March 5, 2024. He faces between 15 and 40 years for solicitation of child pornography and 10 years for the transfer of obscene material. The U.S. Attorney’s Office will request that the judge sentence Rankin to 20 years in federal prison.