Her name is Lisa Staufer and she's 16, but she definitely isn't a girl. This was but an online identity assumed by a 52-year-old US man who used it as a cover to obtain sexually explicit pictures from a 15-year-old victim.


According to a report from the online news website Vancouverite, a man named Michael Speelman admitted to the authorities that he had assumed the identity of 'Lisa Staufer' since 2004.

Posing as 'Lisa', Speelman established a romantic relationship with a 15-year-old female victim. During the course of the relationship, Speelman managed to obtain nude and sexually explicit images of the victim, the Vancouverite reported. He also sent his victim images that were supposed to be of 'Lisa'.

In March 2006, Speelman feigned the death of 'Lisa' but continued to contact the victim by pretending to be 'Sarah Staufer', Lisa's mother.

Posing as 'Sarah', Speelman then sent the victim one of the sexually explicit photos that 'Lisa' had received earlier, and threatened the victim with sending the image to her family.

Speelman's ruse was finally uncovered when the victim noticed an online account associated with Lisa and started a chat, the Vancouverite reported. In the conversation, Speelman admitted to posing as 'Lisa' and faking her death. He also exposed himself to the victim in the video chat.

FBI agents later recovered a photo album and an envelope and Cds containing explicit photos of the victim. Another CD containing pornographic videos of minors and 13 grams of marijuana were also recovered in the search, according to the Vancouverite report.

Speelman now faces five to 20 years in prison for the transportation of child pornography.

Previous cases of children falling prey to adults online include the 2006 suicide of a 13-year-old US girl Megan Meyer.

A mother of the teen's friend had assumed an online identity of a boy on social networking site MySpace and claimed to be attracted to the teen. The 'boy' later turned against Megan and ultimated her, ultimately leading to the teen's death.