AG: Pa. man's Facebook 'surfer' page lured teens

PITTSBURGH — A married father used phony Facebook profiles to pose as two different Florida surfers to solicit sexually graphic messages and photos from seven teenage girls in western Pennsylvania, and two of the girls eventually agreed to meet for sex with the surfers' middle-aged "friend" — yet another fake persona he used, the state attorney general said Friday.

William R. Ainsworth, 53, of Mars, was charged Thursday with 68 counts, including involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and multiple counts of charges that include attempted unlawful contact with a minor, possession of child pornography and criminal use of a computer.

Ainsworth has been jailed in Butler County, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, since he was arrested on similar charges in September, when authorities say he traveled to the home of a 14-year-old girl for sex.

Ainsworth's September arrest led authorities to uncover "an elaborate and disturbing false identity scam" in which Ainsworth concocted profiles depicting two 15-year-old high school dropouts who had run away to become surfers, Attorney General Linda Kelly said at a news conference Friday. The profiles were created using pictures of anonymous teens investigators believe Ainsworth lifted from MySpace pages.

The girls were psychologically manipulated because the "surfers" would pretend to share whatever experience the girls were going through. "If they were having family problems, (one surfer) would say he was having family problems. If they were thinking about running away, he'd talk about running away," said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for Kelly.

Authorities said the psychological manipulation included killing off the first surfer so the girls would become more sympathetic and likely to comply with requests from the second "surfer," who typically introduced the girls to a friend named "Glenn Keefer." ''Keefer" was essentially Ainsworth's alter-ego, a 50-something man from Pennsylvania who would offer the girls money for pictures or sex so they could run away to join the surfers, investigators said.

"These three personas he created were all connected and had a purpose in the scheme," Kelly said.

The phony Facebook pages have been taken down, and the girls are not identified in the 68-page criminal complaint. The alleged victims were 13 to 15 years old, although one girl was 12 when the computer contacts began, Kelly said.