Washington ( CNN ) A 17-year-old Virginia student has been charged with helping recruit for ISIS , federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday . The teen , whose name was not disclosed , was taken into custody last week , the officials said . Prosecutors are seeking to charge him as an adult but currently have charged him as a juvenile , one of the law enforcement officials said . The case remains under seal . It was first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday . The Post , citing officials and neighbors , reported that investigators spent more than a month watching the teen and his home before he was arrested . The teen , who lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington , is accused of helping a slightly older adult travel to Syria . The adult is believed to have joined ISIS there , a separate law enforcement official said . The teen is also accused of distributing ISIS messages to a network of contacts , one of the officials said . The teen is an `` intelligent kid , '' a man who hired him to write for a digital currency news website said Wednesday evening . Dustin O'Bryant , the editor of the website Coin Brief from Alabama , said : `` He did not come across as radical in any way . '' The teen wrote freelance articles for the website for seven months last year . He was told not to bring religion into his writing , O'Bryant said , adding he had noticed the young man had written online posts about his faith . The teen complied , he said . The website editor said he was `` extremely , extremely surprised '' to learn of the arrest from reporters calling him . He had n't spoken to the teen since February , when the young man said he was dealing with personal matters but wanted to start writing for the website again at some point this year . Give me two weeks to three months , the boy told him . O'Bryant said he is shocked by the charge . `` I hope there 's some sort of misunderstanding here , and that he did n't know what he was doing , '' he said . He added that he did n't realize the teen was in high school because he had college courses on his resume . More than 20,000 foreigners have gone to fight for ISIS , the radical Islamist group that controls portions of Iraq and Syria , experts have told Congress . National Intelligence Director James Clapper said 180 Americans have tried to go to fight in Syria . It 's unclear how many of those were attempting to join ISIS . It was also unknown if the man the teen allegedly helped is a U.S. citizen . The names : Who has been recruited to ISIS from the West . Others have been prevented from going there or providing support . Also Wednesday , a 21-year-old California man arrested last summer was indicted , changed with attempting to support terror and other counts . Adam Dandach , of Orange , California , was accused by the FBI in the indictment of attempting to provide himself and material support to work under the direction and control of ISIS . He will be arraigned March 16 . California man accused of trying to join ISIS . In February , three men from New York -- Abdurasul Juraboev , 24 ; Akhror Saidakhmetov , 19 ; and Abror Habibov , 30 -- were arrested and charged with conspiring to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization . An unsealed criminal complaint accused one of the men of discussing a potential attempt to assassinate President Barack Obama . One had discussed hijacking a flight and handing it over to ISIS , the complaint said . Four women from Colorado have been accused of attempting to join ISIS . Three Denver teenagers , who investigators say were recruited via social media , were stopped in Germany in October and sent back to the United States . After being arrested in spring 2014 , Shannon Maureen Conley was one of the first Americans sentenced for conspiracy to support ISIS . Two men who have appeared in horrific ISIS propaganda videos could be from the United States or Canada , according to analysts . The individuals , both of whom are shown wearing masks covering everything but their eyes , spoke in what sounded like North American accents . One was in a video entitled `` Flames of War , '' which shows the execution of a handful of men . The other militant is the speaker in ISIS ' first propaganda video out of Libya , which ends with the graphic beheading of more than a dozen Egyptian Christians . CNN 's Brian Todd and Pamela Brown reported from Washington . CNN 's Shimon Prokupecz reported from New York .
Website boss tells CNN that teen did n't seem radical to him . The teen , who lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington , is accused of helping a slightly older adult travel to Syria . Teen , whose name was not disclosed , was taken into custody October , officials say .