LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A federal grand jury indicted a Missouri woman
Thursday for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social
network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.
Megan Meier, 13, hanged herself in her bedroom after being targeted in a MySpace
hoax.
Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis is said to have helped create a false-identity
MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a
16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Josh didn't exist.
Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages,
including one stating the world would be better off without her.
Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office,
called the case heart-rending.
"The Internet is a world unto itself. People must know how far they can go
before they must stop. They exploited a young girl's weaknesses," Hernandez
said. "Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she's responsible
for her actions."
Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing
protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict
emotional distress on the girl.
Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan.
U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said this was the first time the federal statute
on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case. It
has been used in the past to address hacking.
"This was a tragedy that did not have to happen," O'Brien said.
Both the girl and MySpace are named as victims in the case, he said.
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a.. Read the indictment (pdf)
MySpace is a subsidiary of Beverly Hills, California-based Fox Interactive Media
Inc., which is owned by News Corp. The indictment noted that MySpace computer
servers are located in Los Angeles County.
Due to juvenile privacy rules, the U.S. attorney's office said, the indictment
refers to the girl as M.T.M.
FBI agents in St. Louis and Los Angeles investigated the case, Hernandez said.
Each of the four counts carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in
prison.
Drew will be arraigned in St. Louis and then moved to Los Angeles for trial.
The indictment says MySpace members agree to abide by terms of service that
include, among other things, not promoting information they know to be false or
misleading; soliciting personal information from anyone under age 18 and not
using information gathered from the Web site to "harass, abuse or harm other
people."
Drew and others who were not named conspired to violate the service terms from
about September 2006 to mid-October that year, according to the indictment. It
alleges that they registered as a MySpace member under a phony name and used the
account to obtain information on the girl.
Drew and her coconspirators "used the information obtained over the MySpace
computer system to torment, harass, humiliate, and embarrass the juvenile
MySpace member," the indictment charged.
After the girl killed herself, Drew and the others deleted the information for
the account, the indictment said.
Last month, an employee of Drew's, 19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC's "Good
Morning America" that she created the false MySpace profile but that Drew wrote
some of the messages to Megan.
Grills said Drew suggested talking to Megan via the Internet to find out what
Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend.
Grills also said she wrote the message to Megan about the world being a better
place without her. The message was supposed to end the online relationship with
"Josh" because Grills felt the joke had gone too far.
"I was trying to get her angry so she would leave him alone and I could get rid
of the whole MySpace," Grills told the morning show.
Megan's death was investigated by Missouri authorities, but no state charges
were filed because no laws appeared to apply to the case
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