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Teen's Neighbor Charged in Death
Indictment for Alleged Role in
MySpace Prank Sets Precedent
May 16, 2008
By Linda Deutsch
 LOS
ANGELES, May 15 -- 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 then
committed suicide.
Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis
allegedly helped create a false identity on MySpace, which she used
to contact Megan Meier. Meier thought her new MySpace friend was a
16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. But Josh didn't exist.
Megan hanged herself at home in
October 2006 after receiving cruel messages from "Josh," 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. [Drew] exploited a young girl's weaknesses," Hernandez
said. "Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she's
responsible for her actions."
Drew has denied creating the
account or sending messages to Megan.
She 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.
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. 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.
"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. Due to juvenile privacy rules, the
U.S. attorney's office said, the indictment refers to the girl as
M.T.M.
MySpace is a subsidiary of Beverly
Hills-based Fox Interactive Media Inc., which is owned by News Corp.
The indictment noted that MySpace computer servers are located in
Los Angeles County.
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 they
registered as a MySpace member under a phony name and used the
account to obtain information on the girl.
Drew and her co-conspirators "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" she
created the false MySpace profile but 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.
Associated Press writers Greg
Risling in Los Angeles and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington
contributed to this report.
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