Friend's Mom Charged With Fraud Over MySpace Cyberbullying Suicide
Updated: A 49-year-old Missouri woman accused of helping to concoct a fictitious MySpace account used in a cyberbullying campaign that allegedly drove a neighbor’s child to suicide was indicted today by a federal jury in Southern California.
Lori Drew is charged with three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress on 13-year-old Megan Meier, and one count of conspiracy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Meier hanged herself in 2006 after seemingly being rejected by a purported 16-year-old boy portrayed in the fictitious MySpace account that Drew allegedly helped create. In fact, as discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, the MySpace account reportedly was put together with the involvement of Drew; her daughter, a former friend of Meier’s who had had a falling-out with her; and an employee of Drew’s. At last report, it wasn’t clear who had actually sent the messages to Meier that allegedly drove her to suicide.
“The indictment alleges that Drew and others registered as a member of MySpace under the name of Josh Evans, then began corresponding with Meier in what the girl believed was an online romance. After the ‘romance’ ended, Meier hanged herself in her room,” reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “By doing so, the indictment says, Drew and her co-conspirators violated MySpace’s ‘terms of service’ that prohibit users from making use of fraudulent registration information, using accounts to obtain personal information about members who are juveniles and using MySpace services to harass, abuse or harm other members.”
The much-publicized case elicited widespread outrage, especially after Missouri officials said they couldn’t find any basis for charging Drew. However, federal prosecutors in California subsequently launched an investigation to see whether Drew had defrauded MySpace, which is based in Beverly Hills, by providing false information to the social networking Internet site.
H. Dean Steward, a lawyer who is representing Drew, tells the Los Angeles Times that he plans an aggressive defense and suggests that prosecutors have overstepped their jurisdiction. “There are a lot of issues we are going to need to raise, including why it’s happening in Los Angeles,” he tells the newspaper. “It seems like a Missouri case no matter how you cut it.”
Additional coverage:
Wall Street Journal Law Blog: “MySpace Suicide Case Yields an Indictment … But Will it Hold Up?”
ABAJournal.com (Jan. 9): “Feds in Calif. Probe Mo. Teen’s Suicide Over Web Harassment”
Updated at 8 p.m. to include Wall Street Journal Law Blog post.
