A Virginia teenager was arrested Friday for helping a man travel to Syria in order to join ISIS forces, according to a report. The 17-year-old was taken into custody during an FBI raid on the teen's home in Woodbridge, neighbors said. The Washington Post reports that the boy, who is a student at Osbourn Park High School in nearby Manassas, is being charged as a juvenile, although officials are working to try him as an adult. High schooler: FBI officials arrested a 17-year-old in connection with a man who traveled to Syria and joined up with ISIS . According to officials whose names were withheld by the paper, the teenager allegedly used online contacts to help another slightly older man travel to Syria and link up with ISIS. Officials said they conducted surveillance on the home for about a month before the teenager's arrest. The man who traveled to Syria is expected to face charges, according to officials, who also looked into another 17-year-old student at Osbourn Park, before judging him to have played a much smaller role. A neighbor said that FBI officials knocked on the front and back doors of the home before someone inside opened up. The boy was later led out in handcuffs, with the officials also carrying a computer and other electronic equipment, the neighbor said. Though she did not give her name, the neighbor said that the boy had attended middle school with her daughter and that in spite of spending most his time in the home, remarked the boy seemed like a typical teenager. Drawn to extremism: The man helped by the teenager in Woodbridge successfully reached Syria through contacts overseas to join up with ISIS (file photo) The boy's alleged online ties to individuals close to the Islamist extremist group surprised some who knew him as a smart young man interested in business and technology. 'He was a brilliant kid,' said Dustin O’Bryant, who hired the teenager to write  for his site Coin Brief. 'His English wasn’t perfect, but I was willing to overlook that because the content was great.' O'Bryant said he hired the teenager for the site, which covers BitCoin and other digital currencies, after being impressed by a chemistry paper the boy wrote. He 'had a really strong understanding of the technology behind digital currency in general and even more advanced systems,' O'Bryant said. BuzzFeed reports that the teenager had not communicated with O'Bryant, who lives in Alabama, since February, when he told him he was going through personal issues. 'He in no way came across as any sort of extremist,' O'Bryant said. 'My hope is that there was some kind of misunderstanding, that he didn’t know who he was helping.'
The boy allegedly used online contacts to help another slightly older man travel to Syria and link up with ISIS . The teenager wrote about Bitcoin and other digital currencies for the site Coin Brief . The site's founder said he'd hired the teen off of a chemistry research paper he'd written and could not believe he was in communication with extremists .