Cybercrime stories

[Al-khiyal]

Mom: Web hoax led girl to kill herself

ST. CHARLES, Missouri, November 20, 2007 (AP) - An Internet hoax that ended with the suicide of a 13-year-old has led to calls from her family for better protections against online harassment, though any solution may run afoul of the First Amendment.

Megan Meier, 13, hanged herself October 16, 2006, just minutes after receiving mean messages on the social networking Web site MySpace. She died the next day.

Megan's parents learned about six weeks after her death that their daughter, who thought she was communicating online with a 16-year-old boy, was being deceived. The boy was created by a mother down the street who wanted to know what Megan was saying about her own daughter, who had had a falling out with Megan.

Lt. Craig McGuire of the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department said authorities could not find a crime to charge anyone with in Megan's case.

"How do you legislate bad behavior?'' he asked.

Megan's family wants reforms that would make it illegal for adults to misrepresent themselves to children online and make it illegal to harass or bully online.

Aldermen in Dardenne Prairie, the Meiers' hometown of about 7,000 residents about 35 miles from St. Louis, have proposed a new ordinance related to child endangerment and Internet harassment. And Republican Rep. Cynthia Davis, a state lawmaker who represents the area, said she is trying to see if existing Missouri laws can be improved.

But, she noted, any legal reforms must protect freedom of speech rights. And federal reform might be more appropriate since someone from outside the state could interact with Missouri children online, she said.

Even so, it's hard to know what would work as a response to Megan's situation, Davis said. "This girl was not threatened on the Internet. Somebody said some things that were extremely horrid,'' she said.

What happened to Megan isn't just awful, it ought to be criminal, her mother, Tina Meier, said Monday.

"You cannot, absolutely cannot, as an adult, pose as a 16-year-old boy on a computer and play games with someone,'' Meier, 37, told The Associated Press.

"If there's not a law out there to punish someone for that, that's despicable,'' she said.

Tina Meier, who acknowledges she let her daughter open a MySpace account before she was 14 as the Web site requires, said she monitored her daughter's activities, logging on for her daughter and using software that was designed to capture Megan's communications online.

MySpace did not comment specifically on Meier's case, but an employee said the site does have information about keeping teens safe online, with guidelines for what people can do if they feel they are being bullied.

Meier said more needs to be done to protect children.

"We want the law to change so this doesn't happen again,'' she said.

Web hoax victim's family seeks reforms

[Bent_Bladi]

well, it'd be awesome to ban people from lying on the internet... but it'd be sorta impossible too

[Al-khiyal]

U.S. city makes online harassment illegal

November 22, 2007 -- A US city has passed a new law making it illegal to harass an individual online.

The move by authorities in the city of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, comes after a 13-year-old schoolgirl killed herself last year after receiving cruel messages on the internet.

A six-member board of governors made internet harassment a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of up to $500 (£250) and 90 days in jail.

Mayor Pam Fogarty said the city had proposed the measure after learning about Megan Meier's death.

"It is our hope that by supporting one of our own in Dardenne Prairie, we can do our part to ensure this type of harassing behaviour never happens again, anywhere," Fogarty said.

She added: "Harassment is harassment regardless of the mechanism or tool."

Meier committed suicide after receiving a series of abusive messages on the networking site MySpace last year.

She believed she had struck up a friendship with a 16-year-old boy called Josh Evans, but he then began sending her cruel emails.

On October 16 2006, Megan hanged herself within minutes of receiving a message thought to have said she was a "bad person".

Her parents, Ron and Tina, later learned that the boy was not real, but was instead a creation of a mother who wanted to know what Megan was saying about her own daughter.

Dardenne Prairie's new law makes it illegal to cause a reasonable person to suffer "substantial emotional distress," or for an adult to contact a child under the age of 18 in a communication causing a reasonable parent to fear for the child's wellbeing.

The law becomes applicable when one of the parties communicating is doing so from Dardenne Prairie.

In Britain, online harassment is covered by the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

[Bent_Bladi]

OMG!! 3ou2bal the other states!!

[Al-khiyal]

November 25, 2007 -- Police rarely need to patrol the small suburban town of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri. Its affluent residents are mainly law-abiding professionals whose children play safely behind the picket fences of smart houses in upmarket roads. 'Small and quaint' is how it describes itself.

But last night the St Charles County Sheriff's Department was on alert. Feelings are running high in this tight-knit community. And the focus was on one home in Waterford Crystal Drive and a planned candlelit vigil outside by parents and children with placards reading 'Justice for Megan'. 'It's all we can do,' says Tina Meier. 'It's for Megan.'

Megan Meier was Tina's daughter. She was vulnerable, a little overweight, suffered from depression and she was only 13. About a year ago she persuaded her parents to let her have an account on the social networking site MySpace. And on it she met Josh Evans, 16 and handsome, who told her she was 'beautiful'.

Six weeks later she was dead - found by her distraught parents hanging from a beam in her bedroom closet. After weeks of kind compliments, Josh had suddenly turned. He'd called her 'mean' and said he'd heard she was nasty to her friends.

Others then joined in the online onslaught, saying she was 'fat' and a 'whore'. For Megan, who, says her mother, had been regularly bullied and 'had been striving for years for a boy to like her,' the rejection was too much.

But Josh never existed. He was made up. And, in another cruel twist made public for the first time last week, he was apparently the creation of the mother of one of Megan's friends who lived four doors away in Waterford Crystal Drive.

What is more, despite both police and FBI investigations, Megan's embittered parents have been told that Lori Drew, 48, the woman they accuse of causing the death of their 'goofy, bouncy and beautiful daughter,' faces no charges. Cyberspace, it seems, has outpaced the law.

'We've been told there is no law to 'fit'. That is why this vigil is so important,' Tina, a real estate agent told The Observer. 'I cannot do anything to bring her back. But what I can do is press for change. And I get comfort from the fact that a tightening of the law will be Megan's legacy and protect other children from this ever happening again.'

The allegation, according to Tina and Megan's father Ron, and also contained in a report filed by the St Charles County Sheriff's Department, is that Drew perpertrated this heartless online hoax to win Megan's confidence and establish if she was badmouthing her own daughter, Sarah, now 15.

For a year the Meiers kept quiet on their attorney's advice. Last week they broke their silence for the first time. Prosecutors say the case is complicated, and there is no way of proving why this young girl took her life, though they may re-examine if there is new evidence.

But the allegation, and lack of action, has bewildered and enraged America. Virtual vigilantism has taken over. Irate bloggers have posted details of Drew and her husband Curt, 51, on the internet identifying their home and telephone number and details of their jobs, his as a manager in a local factory, hers as an ad saleswoman.

The couple, now bombarded with hate mail and reportedly receiving death threats, have remained silent on legal advice.

Now Dardenne Prairie is turning on them. They are shunned by neighbours. They have had a brick through their window and been subjected to a paintball attack and false 911 calls. Last week the town's board of aldermen unanimously passed a law making cyber-harassment a misdeamenour with a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine.

'It's not much,' admitted Mayor Pam Fogarty, who hugged a tearful Tina Meier after the vote; her own daughter went to the same school as Megan and she was due to join the candlelit vigil. 'But it's a start. We intend to press for changes to the state and federal laws.'

Tina, now in the process of divorcing Ron, concedes Lori Drew may not have thought of the consequences of her actions. But, she says, Megan had had a 'typical teenager' on-off-on-again friendship with her own daughter, had regularly slept over at their house and accompanied them on family outings. Drew knew of Megan's emotional problems, for which she was receiving counselling and medication.

'She might as well have held a gun to her head. She thought it was funny, she thought it was a game. I just want them behind bars,' Tina said. 'She was an adult and she preyed on and stalked a child, posing as a 16-year-old boy. She messed with her. She screwed with her mind. She lifted her up and then crushed her right back down.'

'I hear she's receiving death threats and that she's been besieged in their home. But I don't feel one ounce sorry for her for the repercussions in any shape or form. I intend to fight to the bitter end to see her prosecuted.'

Anguish for mother of suicide girl as 'cyber-tormentor' escapes the law

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Megan Meier police reports

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This joke should last a lifetime

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Why outing Lori Drew was the right thing to do

[Al-khiyal]

MySpace hoax leads to suicide, but no laws broken

[Al-khiyal]

November 30, 2007 -- New Zealand police officers questioned the suspected teenage kingpin of an international cyber crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts, officials said today.

Working with the FBI and police in the Netherlands, New Zealand police raided the home of the 18-year-old in the North Island city of Hamilton and took him into custody along with several computers, said Martin Kleintjes, head of the police electronic crime centre. He was later released without charge after being questioned, though police said he was still part of their investigation.

The case is part of an international crackdown on hackers who allegedly assume control of thousands of computers and amass them into centrally controlled clusters known as botnets. The hackers can then use the computers to steal credit card information, manipulate stock trades and even crash industry computers, authorities say.

Eight people have been indicted, pleaded guilty or have been convicted since the investigation started in June. Thirteen additional warrants have been served in the U.S. and overseas in the investigation.

The FBI estimates that more than one million computers have been infected and puts the combined economic losses at more than US$20 million.

The New Zealander, known by his cyber identification as "AKILL," was "head of an international spybot ring that has infiltrated computers round the world with their malicious software," Kleintjes told National Radio.

Kleintjes told The Associated Press the teenager, whose name was not released because he was under 18 when the alleged offences began, was cooperating with investigators in telling them how the crime system works.

"We have seized a number of computers and are talking with him," he said. "We are going for evidence and the case will develop from there. We're still in the early stages of the investigation."

Detective Inspector Peter Devoy, the senior investigator in the case, said the youth was later released after questioning and had not been charged.

Further investigation of the youth's seized computers could lead to international inquiries, he said, "and I anticipate we will be talking to 'AKILL' again," Devoy said.

Kleintjes said possible charges against the teen could involve having unauthorized access to computers and possessing computer hacking tools — charges that carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Spybot and botnet are jargon for infiltrating a group of computers and infecting them with malicious software that allows them to be used to collect information — mainly credit card and bank account details.

Kleintjes said the New Zealander had written software that evaded normal computer spyware systems, then sold his skills to hackers.

"He is very bright and very skilled in what he's doing," Kleintjes said. "He hires his services out to others."

Authorities allege that the New Zealand suspect and 21-year-old Ryan Goldstein, who was indicted earlier this month in the United States, were involved in crashing a University of Pennsylvania engineering school server on February 23, 2006.

Officials said that the server, which typically handles about 450 daily requests for Internet downloads, instead got 70,000 requests from the account of an unsuspecting Penn student over four days. Over time, the FBI followed an electronic trail from that student's account to Goldstein's screen name, "Digerati," and the New Zealand hacker.

The crash briefly shut down computers at Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, but did relatively little damage, university spokesman Ron Ozio said.

Goldstein has pleaded not guilty and was released on bail while awaiting a trial set for March 10.

He faces up to five years in prison and a US$250,000 (€170,000) fine if convicted of the single count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud.

"We feel the charges are inflated," defense lawyer Ronald Levine said Thursday. "We think this is kind of an exaggerated case."

Teenager arrested in major cyber crime investigation