U.S. prosecutors seek to file charges in MySpace suicide case
www.chinaview.cn 2008-01-09 10:21:00   Print

    LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. prosecutors are mulling ways to charge a woman who authorities think is responsible for the suicide of a teenager girl after she posed as a boy at the popular social networking website MySpace, a report said Tuesday.

    A federal grand jury in Los Angeles has begun issuing subpoenas in the case of a Missouri teenager who committed suicide after being rejected by the person she thought was a 16-year-old boy shemet at MySpace, according to the Los Angeles Times.

    The case created a public furor across the United States when authorities revealed that the "friend" was really the mother of one of the girl's former friends.

    When the woman abruptly ended the online relationship and sent cruel messages to the 13-year-old girl, telling her that the world would be a better place without her, the girl hanged herself in a closet.

    Local and federal authorities in Missouri conducted an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the girl's death but were unable to find legal grounds under which to charge Lori Drew, the woman who allegedly perpetrated the hoax.

    However, prosecutors in Los Angeles are exploring the possibility of charging the woman with defrauding MySpace by creating the false account. They believe they have jurisdiction over the case because the website, owned by News Corp., is based in Beverly Hills.

Editor: Du Guodong
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