I just watched on the news where a local women had her computer hijacked by a hacker demanding money. Their computer was taken by the FBI for investigation. It would not boot and threatened to delete a file every 30 minutes unless they paid the ransom via wester union to some account.
According to the news report anti-virus software and fire walls did not stop this from happening. (Most likely because she was using NORTAN or McAfee.)
At any expense WOW. Talk about a nightmare.
News Story Link