FBI Says Man Used Internet to Lure Girl

In a chilling reminder of the dangers of the Internet, the FBI said Monday that it has arrested a Long Beach man on suspicion of traveling to Georgia to get a 15-year-old girl he met online, flying her to Los Angeles and spending a week in a motel having sex with her.

Michael Glover, 43, had bought a one-way plane ticket for the girl, who appeared to go willingly after months of exchanging daily messages with him, according to an FBI affidavit.

“It’s definitely disturbing,” said FBI spokeswoman Cheryl Mimura in Los Angeles. “She’s only 15 years old. Her family didn’t even know.”

FBI agents arrested Glover on Thursday, one day after finding the girl in a Motel 6 in Santa Fe Springs. The two had been there since the previous Friday, authorities said.

Glover, who works for a paralegal company, is expected to make a court appearance today to determine if he should be held in custody or freed on bail until a Sept. 11 preliminary hearing.

The complaint charges Glover with two counts of transporting a minor across state lines with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He faces a maximum of 30 years in prison if convicted on both counts.

Authorities said the allegations underscore a disturbing trend in which adults have taken to the chat rooms of cyberspace to find young victims.

One Seattle-based Internet company executive, Patrick Naughton, was arrested a year ago as he approached a woman who he thought was a 13-year-old he had met in a chat room called “dad&daughtersex.;”

The woman, who met him on the Santa Monica Pier, was a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

Naughton pleaded guilty to crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. In an unusual plea arrangement, he agreed to design computer programs to help authorities trap Internet predators.

In the Glover case, FBI Special Agent Timothy Stanislawski described the suspect’s alleged relationship with the girl in an affidavit. According to the document:

Glover met the girl in April in an America Online chat room.

Soon, he mailed her a pager, and they began sending text messages to each other daily.

On Aug. 17 or 18, Glover flew to Birmingham, Ala., rented a car and drove to a ballpark near Rex, Ga. There, he met the girl, her sister and an unidentified male.

Glover told the girl’s sister “that he was not taking the victim away, but the victim was going of her own free will,” the affidavit said.

The victim told FBI agents that she knew Glover was coming to meet her with a one-way ticket to California.

She said Glover seemed surprised at how young she was.

“The victim told Glover that she was 15 years old when they met,” the affidavit states. “Glover’s response was, ‘Oh God.’ ” The FBI would not say what age, if any, the girl had claimed to be.

Nevertheless, the girl told FBI agents, Glover then drove “rapidly” from Atlanta to Birmingham, avoiding the larger airport “because Glover was concerned that the police would be looking for the victim at the Atlanta airport,” the affidavit said.

Meanwhile, the girl’s sister told her parents what had happened, and they called police.

FBI agents also interviewed Mayda German, who worked with Glover at Advanced Legal Services in Long Beach.

German told authorities that she and Glover shared a computer and that she had seen printouts of his e-mail messages.

“They consist of ‘love talk,’ including lots of ‘I love you’s’ and the like,” the affidavit states.

German said that Glover had been communicating in chat rooms with at least four girls who were between 17 and 20, and that she had talked on the phone with two of them, according to the affidavit.

Authorities seized the computer after Glover consented to a search.