Bad news for
Lori Drew, aka
Radar's
"Worst Person on the Internet," aka the Missouri mother who used a fake MySpace account to
cyber-bully a teenage girl into hanging herself because the poor kid thought she was corresponding with an older guy crush old and not a sick, twisted adult: she's been
indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on three charges of fraud and on count of conspiracy.
Prosecutors were initially unable to charge Drew with anything because they couldn't find an appropriate statute under which to file charges. A grand jury in California, which is where MySpace is headquartered, eventually decided to pursue charges on the grounds that she had provided the site with false information. She is now being charged with "accessing protecting computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress." (The Smoking Gun has the full indictment.)
Drew has maintained that she did nothing wrong, even going so far as to shift blame onto another girl, 19-year-old Ashley Grills. The indictment mentions unnamed "co-conspirators," but none are Grills: she's actually a key witness for the prosecution.
No hypothetical jail terms have been bandied about, but yeah. Nothing is too long so far as we're concerned.
Kudos to MySpace for finding a way to act on what so many felt. That this woman's childish, hateful actions. should be punished. It recalls the "Texas Cheerleader Mom" story.
Sadly, we are helping her trial defense. Her attorney will argue that an unbiased jury will be impossible to find. The nature of Internet interactions enabled the crime, the death, the indictment and the defense.
It seems that Pandora left a few boxes for others to open.
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