Craig Jay Lee Edgar was found guilty Thursday of internet luring involving a P.E.I. teenager. (CBC)

A 21-year-old New Brunswick man was found guilty Thursday in Summerside provincial court on one charge of internet luring involving an Island teenager.

Craig Jay Lee Edgar, of Moncton, was 19 when he had sexually explicit online conversations with a 13-year-old girl.

Judge Jeff Lantz said the emails and chats may have started out innocently, but they soon became sexually explicit and escalated out of control.

He cited a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that states the accused doesn't have to intend to meet the victim in order to be found guilty; he just has to try to make a meeting possible.

In this case, Lantz said, the emails and MSN Messenger exchanges showed that Edgar discussed meeting the girl and "doing it for real."

Edgar will be sentenced on Aug. 24. The Crown wants him to be sent to jail for at least nine months.

During the trial, defence lawyer Scott Fowler argued that the conversations between Edgar and the girl were nothing more than fantasy. Both the girl and Edgar told police they never actually made plans to meet up, and Edgar said he would not have followed through with it.

Fowler said it isn't against the law for the two of them to just talk.

"Cyber sex is not illegal," Fowler said. "The court may find what happened inappropriate, but there is certainly nothing illegal about it."

In a taped police interview played in court last month, Edgar said the conversations were sexual in nature and that they "got out of hand." He said he had no intention of having sex with the girl.

In the taped interview, Edgar said he met the girl in person in the summer of 2008 and they exchanged phone numbers and email addresses.

Edgar told police that eventually, the conversations, some of which were initiated by the girl, became sexual in nature.