Man who posed as teen girl on the Internet gets 30 days in jail

A 58-year-old Mountain Home man will serve 30 days in jail after being sentenced Tuesday in District Court on a charge of endangering the welfare of a minor after he posed as a 16-year-old girl on the Internet. Doug Beckman was sentenced to one year in jail and fined $1,000 by District Judge Van Gearhart. The judge suspended all but 90 days. Of those, Beckman will serve 30 days in jail and perform 60 days of community service for the city of Mountain Home. Beckman was put on supervised probation for the remaining nine months of his sentence and was ordered to pay $1,000 for the girl's counseling if the family seeks counseling. "To some, that may seem like a lot and to many others, not enough," Gearhart said. Tuesday was the sentencing phase of Beckman's case. Last month, he entered a guilty plea to the charge. Beckman posed as a girl while chatting with other men in Internet chatrooms and arranged to meet them in Mountain Home, according to police records. One of those men e-mailed the messages to a counselor at Mountain Home High School. He said he was concerned when he learned the conversations included another man inviting the alleged girl "BlondeMegan" — also known as "Megan" — to bring her 11-year-old sister to a meeting for sexual relations, according to a Mountain Home Police Department report. The school counselor notified the MHPD.

More Pics Here