A Terre des Hommes researcher starts a chat session in a public chat room where users solicit fake 10-year-old girl nicknamed "Sweetie." Photo: Peter Dejong/AP

This article was first published on Mashable.

A 10-year-old girl from the Philippines, nicknamed Sweetie, has helped authorities convict one Australian on child pornography charges. But Sweetie isn't real — she's a virtual digital avatar created to lure predators as part of a global sting operation.

Scott Robert Hansen, a 37-year-old from Australia, is the first person to be convicted as a result of his interactions with Sweetie, according to Agence France Press.

Hansen pleaded guilty to three charges related to child sex on Tuesday, including sending obscene pictures of himself to Sweetie, having child porn on his computer, and breaking a sex offenders order, according to Australian media. Hansen is a registered sex offender from Brisbane, and he was first convicted for flashing a school bus by standing naked in front of its windows in 1995.

"[I]'m naked, ever seen a guy naked?" Hansen asked Sweetie during their online chat, as revealed by the BBC, who obtained the chat logs of their conversation.

Hansen reportedly approached Sweetie on the understanding that she was underage, and then performed a sexual act via his webcam. Hansen was convicted to two years in prison, and has already served 8 months in detainment.

Sweetie was created last year by the Dutch branch of Terre des Hommes International Federation, a charity that works to protect children.

The organisation said that a group of its researchers posed as Sweetie during the sting operation, visiting "dozens" of chat rooms. The researchers then passed the chat logs of their conversations with the predators to Europol.

During the sting operation, Sweetie was approached by 20,000 people over a 10-week period. Some 1,000 of them have already been identified.

"We are pleased with this great result, as the judge considered that the offense was similar to what could have been made against a real child," Raffaele Salinari, president of Terre des Hommes International Federation, said in a statement.

One of the operators who chatted with Hansen told the BBC that the man was "very direct" and even asked him to get Sweetie's fictional 8-year-old sister involved.

"Some of the men we interacted with literally give me nightmares," the anonymous operator said.