LOS ANGELES - In a highly unusual use of a federal law generally employed in computer fraud cases, a federal grand jury indicted a Missouri woman Thursday accused of using a phony online identity to trick and taunt a 13-year-old girl, who committed suicide in response to the cyber baiting.

The woman, Lori Drew, was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization and via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress. Each of the four counts carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Drew lives in O'Fallon, Mo., where, according to the indictment, she created a MySpace account under the name Josh Evans in 2006. Prosecutors said she used the social networking account to contact a young girl named in the indictment as M.T.M. with sexually charged messages from "Josh." The girl, who has been identified by her mother as Megan Meier, was a former friend of Drew's daughter.

After a few weeks of chatting, "Josh Evans" began to send Megan nasty messages, via the MySpace account, ending with one that suggested "the world would be a better place" without her. Megan, thinking she had been rejected by "Josh," committed suicide in her home.

Missouri law enforcement officials said they did not find enough evidence to bring charges in the case, and Drew, who was 48 when Megan died, has repeatedly denied creating the account.

But because MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, is based in Beverly Hills and its server is there, federal prosecutors decided to wield a federal statute that is generally used to prosecute fraud that occurs across state lines.

The statute applies in the case, the indictment says, because by violating the user agreement of MySpace, which prohibits phony accounts, Drew was seeking information "to further a tortuous act, namely, intentional infliction of emotional distress."

"To my knowledge it is the first case of its kind in the nation," said Thomas P. O'Brien, a U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. "But when an adult violates terms on a MySpace account to gain information that creates this type of reaction, it caused this office to take a really hard look." He added, "This was a horribly tragic case."

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