Grant Steinfeld

Grant Steinfeld was an early participant in the creation of Lonelygirl15. He was hired to shoot still photography of the project and was involved with the creation of lonelygirl15.com.

Steinfeld is a San Fransisco area software engineer who originally played the role of Bukanator.

Around July, 2006, Steinfeld was shut out of the project. He went to Candace Murphy, a reporter with insidebayarea.com, told her that Lonelygirl15 was a production and encouraged her to hack into the Lonelygirl15 e-mail accounts to learn the identity of The Creators.

He later told a different version of the story to Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times. Steinfeld claimed that he grew tired of running the site and dropped out of the project after fans discovered that the site had been registered before the first Lonelygirl15 video was posted on YouTube.

Some of Steinfeld's photography of Jessica Lee Rose was published in the New York Times and were briefly available on Steinfeld's personal Web site.