And now for an anti-social story about so called social media.
Andrea Isom of Fox2 reports that a local 17-year-old, Hector Hernandez, was being blackmailed, so he pawned his family's valuables to pay about $1,600 to the blackmailers not to post videos of him on Facebook. The Fox2 report does not say where the teen is from, but shows that Detroit pawn shop he used.
Isom reports that the blackmailers obtained a video via a "rat" virus that allows people to turn on a person's webcam and begin recording, unbeknownst to them.
Fox2 reports:
Hernandez shared the threatening Facebook posts with Fox 2. The posts threatened to share the embarrassing video with friends, on Facebook and on his school's website if he didn't send money.
"I was scared. I didn't know what to do. I was trying to have them not send it," he told Fox2.
"I didn't want to tell my parents so I took their jewelry," Hernandez says. "I didn't want my parents finding out what I did and I feel terrible about it." Hernandez says he believes what he sold was all worth $100,000. He was given $1,500.
Isom reports that Hernandez sent some of that money to the Philippines, per the orders from the Facebook post, but the threats didn't stop.
"They said they wanted $300 at first, and then $1,100, and then another $300," Hernandez says.
His mother Lilia Hernandez told Fox2: "So angry. I'm disappointed with him. "
She wants her belongings back from the pawnshop.
