A college student was arrested Thursday for allegedly hijacking the webcams of young women -- among them reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf -- taking nude images, then blackmailing his victims to send him more explicit material or else be exposed.
Jared James Abrahams, a 19-year-old computer science student from Temecula, California, surrendered on Thursday to the FBI on federal extortion charges, the agency announced. Authorities say he victimized young women surreptitiously, by taking control of their computers then photographing them as they changed out of their clothes.
Abrahams appeared in court later in the day, then was released 'on intensive pretrial supervision and home detention with electronic monitoring' after his parents signed bond agreements totaling $50,000, FBI spokeswoman Lourdes Arocho said. U.S. District Judge Jean Rosenbluth ruled that he could use a single desktop computer at his parents' home for school only, albeit only after monitoring software is applied.
When he admitted what he'd done in June, Abrahams said he had 30 to 40 'slave computers' -- or other people's electronic devices he controlled -- and has had as many as 150 total, according to a criminal complaint.
His arrest came six months after a teenager identified in court documents as C.W. alerted authorities. She has since publicly identified herself as Cassidy Wolf, the recently crowned Miss Teen USA. She touted news reports of .