Idiot kid things would be having Obama tweet "I think @Kelly2003 should go to the prom with Clark". If you're old enough to run a send back scam, you should know it's wrong.

I think the friction of an act contributes to the analysis. It isn't hard to get a bitcoin account. It's a number. With other fake numbers assigned to it. Get people to send fake numbers to your fake number.

Should a 17 year old lose prime years of his life? Is there a better way to educate/reform the person?

If you say "Well in this other instance, the book got thrown at so-and-so". To this, I would ask, does that make it right?

One thing I think we ought to give credit to is that as Infosec becomes higher profile and more public, the sophistification of kids will rise with it.

For example many of the techniques that are basically public info on youtube[1] nowadays was hidden in some "darkweb" forum not many years back.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/STOKfredrik/videos