Any good lawyer would say that the two weren't necessarily connected. All the author knew when he contacted this kid's family was that he was owed $380. He was attempting to collect on that debt by using embarrassment and threats of police involvement.
I still don't see how this is a debt. A debt is something you willingly take and make your best to pay it back. If you can't, you stay in contact with the other party. You don't just delete your account and play dead. Playing devil's advocate is sometimes a good thing, but that 22 yo dude was just being plain shady. He clearly never intended to pay.
No. What I'm saying is that until it has been declared as theft/stealing by a court of law, the author here is probably taking on some liability by notifying his family and publicly relishing in the aftermath via this blog post.
There's a little concept that you may have heard of: innocent until proven guilty. No crime has been committed until a court of competent jurisdiction says it has.