A Missouri woman whose online taunting was blamed in the 2006 suicide of her 13-year-old neighbor now faces criminal charges.

A grand jury on Thursday handed up an indictment charging Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Missouri, which is 30 miles west of St. Louis, with one count of conspiracy and three counts of unauthorized computer access. A federal grand jury in California heard the case because that is where MySpace, the Web site where the taunting occurred, is located.

Drew, her teenage daughter and a third woman, Ashley Grills, who worked for the Drew family, reportedly created a MySpace.com profile under the fictional name Josh Evans in order to taunt Megan Meier, who had been a friend of Drew's daughter and lived on the same block.

"After approximately four weeks of flirtatious communications between Josh Evans and [Meier], Drew and her co-conspirators broke off the relationship," the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California said in a statement. "Within an hour [Meier] hanged herself in her room. She died the next day."

Drew was vilified after the incident, which drew international attention. In a February 2008 interview she claimed to have been barraged with threatening calls after the story broke, and her address and phone number were posted online.