[bawolff]

> The parents should file a police report, it will be a very harsh lesson to the kid but he has screwed up on an incredible scale

I actually disagree. If it was my kid, i would be willing to eat the 20k in exchange for protecting them from the legal system. That's not to say there wouldn't be consequences, i would be pretty livid, but 20k would be a small price to pay. This may be influenced though by (like many hn'ers) being employed in the tech industry, where 20k is a substantial sum, but not lifesavings amount of money.

The issue I see is that streamers are real people, with hopes dreams, etc. They may have already spent the money donated to them, etc. Sure if it was actually stolen its reasonable to require them to give it back. One of the reasons the penalty for stealing is harsh, is because it doesn't just hurt the person stole from, but also the people who were paid in the stolen money. The parent wants to be made whole without any of the consequences coming back to either the son or the parent. This isn't fair to the streamers. Either the parent needs to take the responsibility for the stolen money (which she has elected to do by not pressing charges, but it comes with a 20k price tag) or needs to throw teenager under the bus in order to be made whole under the normal legal system. In the article, the parent wants both to shield the kid from the legal system but also disavow herself from his actions. But its unfair to other hurt parties to have both. Either the parent takes on responsibility for the kid's actions or she doesn't. There is no magic loophole where the parent takes responsibility but doesn't end up with consequences, nor should there be.