Burleson man thought he was meeting a 13-year-old girl for sex. Instead he met police

A 23-year-old man who posted an sex solicitation advertisement on Craigslist a year ago thought he was going to meet a 13-year-old girl at a Fort Worth hotel. He was greeted by police instead and has now been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison after being convicted of enticement of a minor.

Senior U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means also sentenced Preston Anthony King, 23, of Burleson to 20 years of supervised release on Tuesday morning.

The sentence follows King’s guilty plea in August to one count of enticement of a minor. Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said he has been in custody since November 2016 on a related complaint.

According to documents filed in the case, on March 14, 2016, an undercover Fort Worth police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl responded King's ad on Craigslist.

During the conversation, the officer told King that she was 13, and later in the conversation King told the officer that he wanted to engage in sexual intercourse with her. King agreed to meet the fictional 13-year-old girl on March 15, 2016, at a hotel room in Fort Worth to engage in sex, according to court documents.

When King arrived, the Fort Worth Police Department took him into custody.

The case was brought on by the U.S. attorney's office as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Burleson man thought he was meeting a 13-year-old girl for sex. Instead he met police."