CARLTON, Ore. -- The story of an Oregon girl's message in a bottle that traveled halfway around the world seemed almost too good to be true. It turns out it was.

According to the CBS TV station in Hawaii, a man has admitted that he found the bottle several years ago, not far from where an Oregon girl launched it in Panther Creek, Oregon. According to the report, the man who only would identify himself as 'Tom' moved to Hawaii and found the bottle recently while unpacking, then sent the letter to Straight, pretending to be a 16-year-old boy .

In February of 2003, Emily Streight put a message in a bottle, sealed it with duct tape and dropped it into Panther Creek eight miles from her home in Carlton.

She figued it got stuck in the brush along the creek. She was 12 at the time.

Then in mid-October, she received a letter claiming to be from a 16-year-old Honolulu boy named Keoni, who said he found the bottle on a Hawaiian beach following a luau. He enclosed the original note with his letter.

In the letter, the man who called himself 'Keoni' claimed in a one-page typed note that his ancestry was a mix of Hawaiian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese, that he liked to surf, kayak and skateboard, and that he played wide receiver on the local football team.

When she heard the news about the letter-writer's true identity, Emily Streight told KGW she thought the whole thing seemed pretty far fetched when she go the letter in the mail, and said she was not upset or mad at the man.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.