Myspace.com, the social networking website popular with millions of teenagers worldwide, has long been a magnet for adult predators who pose as children to meet young victims on the internet. Now, in an unusual case of role reversal, two Florida girls aged 13 and 14 have been charged with armed robbery after allegedly setting up a bogus profile of an attractive woman to snare lonely men.
The pair are said to have invented the identity of an 18-year-old called Natalia, who they described as ”just lookin’ for some fun”. They also posted provocative photographs to entice men into chatting online. One alleged victim told police he spent two weeks building up a relationship with ”Natalia” before he was invited to meet her at an apartment in Jacksonville. But when he turned up, he claims, he was met by one of the girls, who said she was the woman’s friend then robbed him at gunpoint.
”This was not the girl whose picture was on MySpace,” said the man, who wanted to remain anonymous. ”She took the gun and put it to my head and said, ‘Empty out your pockets’.”
The girls, named by a local television station as Rafaella Yusupova (13) and Yana Galilova (14) were arrested nearby with a male youth. Officers from the Jacksonville police department say they also found two loaded guns, and have charged the pair with armed robbery and carrying a concealed firearm.
MySpace, which claims almost 90-million members and is estimated to be the world’s fifth most popular website, encourages people to post and share personal information and make new friends online. But it has been at the centre of several hidden-identity controversies.
A 14-year-old girl from Austin, Texas, is seeking more than $30-million in damages from the website’s owners after she claimed to have been raped by a 19-year-old man she met online. Her alleged attacker, who was arrested last month, had posed as a student at high school in his MySpace profile.
”It’s a shopping list for predators,” said Jacalyn Leavitt, chairperson of the internet Keep Safe Coalition, a Virginia-based group pressing for tighter online safety for minors. ”There is a very dark side to these social networking websites.”
MySpace requires its members to be at least 14, but children are able to circumvent this by entering a false birth date. The website this week announced restrictions that will prevent adults from contacting children unless they know their full name and e-mail address instead of just a user name. – Guardian Unlimited Â