FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A jury has awarded $11.3 million in damages to the head of a children's services referral company, after she was called a "con artist" and "fraud" in Internet messages posted by a Louisiana woman.

The award on Sept. 19 for Sue Scheff, founder of Parent's Universal Resource Experts Inc., is among the largest ever for a lawsuit claiming Internet defamation, according to legal analysts and attorneys involved in the case.

"Just because you don't like someone or what they do, it does not give you carte blanche to post false statements about a person on the Internet," Scheff said this week.

The $11.3 million judgment, which includes $5 million in punitive damages, was awarded Sept. 19 for Scheff in her 2003 lawsuit against Carey Bock, of Mandeville, La. Bock, who did not show up for the trial, had posted the negative messages on an Internet site used by parents with troubled children at boarding schools.

The criticisms came after Scheff referred Bock to a consultant to assist Bock in bringing her two sons back from a boarding school in Costa Rica. A second woman who was originally part of the lawsuit, Ginger Warbis, had also been critical of Scheff, but Warbis was dismissed as a defendant.

"People in this industry have consistently used their money and their access to lawyers to silence critics of the industry and this may be one of those examples," said Warbis' attorney, Philip Elberg.

It's unclear if Scheff will ever collect any money from Bock, who relocated to Texas after Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana last year. A working phone number for Bock could not be located Wednesday and her former Florida attorney did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.