According to Diana DeGarmo, runner-up in the 2004 American Idol, the Melbourne woman that stalked her was "trying to ruin my life ... [with] sadistic cruely."

Posing as a fan, the woman blackmailed and stalked DeGarmo.

In a statement to Victorian detectives witnessed by an FBI agent, DeGarmo said Tanya Maree Quattrocchi unleashed a "text message war," while also placing hundreds of phone calls and attacks on her email accounts earlier this year.

DeGarmo said she felt trapped by Quattrocchi who "terrorized me for almost five months of my life that I can never get back." The criminal pled guilty yesterday to a charge of blackmail and stalking.

The troubling events began when DeGarmo accepted Quattrocchi, who posed as a teenage girl from Minnesota, into her MySpace account in February. After replying to a series of questions about American Idol and her singing, DeGarmo was continually pursued by this supposed fan, as she asked for personal information before posing as the singer and tricking the site's server into supplying her password.

According to a police summary, between March and June, Quattrocchi rang DeGarmo 369 times and text-messaged her 570 times.

In April, Quattrocchi emailed the singer's producer pretending to be her and was given two of her unreleased songs she later threatened to release publicly if DeGarmo did not meet her online.

"No matter how many times I changed my passwords or tried to keep my information safe, she would always break back in," the American Idol finalist said of her stalker.
After Quattrocchi was arrested on June 30, she told police she knew DeGarmo wanted her to leave her alone, but did not believe she was a stalker. She said she never planned to release the songs; it was a ploy so DeGarmo would contact her.

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.