A prior sex offender in Fulton, MO, was recently sentenced in federal court after his mother and grandmother transported a 13-year old victim from Alabama to engage in illegal sexual activity with him.

The U.S. Attorney's Office says 22-year old Michael James Collins was sentenced on March 4, to 15 years in federal prison without parole. The court also sentenced Collins to 25 years of supervised release following incarceration.

Collins reportedly pleaded guilty on November 26, 2018, to transporting a minor under the age of 14 across state lines with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity and to committing the felony offense while he was under the requirement to register as a sex offender.

Collins, who was a resident at the Community Supervision Center in Fulton, was on probation at the time of the offense for a prior felony conviction for sexual misconduct involving a child.

The Callaway County Sheriff’s Department received information in December 2017 that a 13-year old girl from Alabama was missing from her home. A cell phone ping placed the child victim at a residence in Fulton, where she was located and removed.

Authorities say Collins admitted that he paid his grandmother $400 to go to Alabama to pick up the victim, whom he met on a dating website in July 2017. Collins’s mother was also with his grandmother when the victim was picked up in Alabama and transported to Missouri.

The grandmother and mother also transported the victim between the Fulton residence and Collins’s residence at the Community Supervision Center when they were taking him back and forth to work. He admitted to engaging in sexual activity with the child victim while being transported by his grandmother and mother in their minivan to his place of employment.

Collins and the victim reportedly communicated with each other from July to December 2017 via cell phone, Facebook Messenger and other apps, which was a violation of Collins’s probation. Collins accessed the internet using his cell phone as well as his mother’s cell phone. He and the child victim talked about having sex, had telephone sex and engaged in sexual role-playing that is commonly known as “sexting.”

Collins’s mother and the victim also communicated regularly using Facebook Messenger.

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