Show-Me State Times

A registered sex offender from Jefferson County, Missouri, Patrick Mayberry, has pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possession of child pornography. The 45-year-old resident of High Ridge admitted in court on Tuesday that he had been selling child pornography online.

Mayberry confessed to investigators that he earned over $2,000 by distributing the illicit material obtained through the dark web. Authorities discovered multiple videos containing child sexual abuse material in his MEGA cloud-storage account.

The investigation was initiated following a cyber tipline report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which indicated that Mayberry had uploaded 88 files with child pornography to his Google account.

At the time of this offense, Mayberry was on probation. His criminal history includes a 2003 conviction for second-degree rape involving a victim under age 16 in Oklahoma and a 2008 conviction for attempting to procure child pornography by seeking nude photographs of a nine-year-old. In 2021, he was convicted in Jefferson County Circuit Court in Missouri for failing to register as a sex offender.

Sentencing is set for February 13, 2025. The charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years and up to twenty years in prison, along with a possible fine of $250,000 or both.

The case was investigated by the St. Louis County Police Department and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson is handling the prosecution.

This case falls under Project Safe Childhood, an initiative launched by the Department of Justice in May 2006 aimed at combating child sexual exploitation and abuse nationwide. This program involves collaboration among federal, state, and local resources to apprehend individuals exploiting children via the Internet and assist victims. More information about Project Safe Childhood can be found at www.justice.gov/psc.