A Sanford man accused of emailing sexually explicit videos of children to an undercover federal agent pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Portland to a felony charge of transportation of child pornography.

Richard Moulton Jr., 30, was arrested on a warrant in March following a Feb. 28 email exchange in which he sent Special Agent David Fife of Homeland Security Investigations four videos from his email address. Each of the videos depicted a child or children between the ages of 4 and 12 engaged in sex acts, either with an adult or other juveniles, according to court records.

During the course of Fife’s undercover work into child pornography, an email address he uses was added to a distribution list consisting of 192 email addresses, including Moulton’s. He sent a mass email to the list on Feb. 28 with an altered image of a female Homeland Security agent that made her look between the age of 12 and 14 and claimed that she was his “lovely dau.. shes 12 (sic),” Fife said in a written affidavit filed with the court.

Moulton responded to Fife’s email an hour later, asking “Any vids of her,” and less than an hour after that Moulton sent an email with the four sexually explicit videos of children, according to Fife’s affidavit.

Federal authorities followed up by executing a search warrant at the apartment where Moulton was staying, at 44 Jackson St. in Sanford, and corresponding with Google to seek the contents of Moulton’s Gmail account, according to court records.

Moulton is scheduled to be sentenced before Judge Nancy Torresen on Sept. 9. He faces a minimum of five years and as many as 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Scott Dolan can be reached at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Twitter: @scottddolan