Extortion ?

The other day a friend of mine's say's he was surfing the porn sites ,and a pop up window saying his computer is now compromised and is frozen ? He couldn't go any further because he was hit with a Trojan virus, the pop up window said, unless he paid them a certain amount of money in 48 hours all his files would be forwarded to the FBI, InterPool and NASA and he would be prosecuted too the fullest of a 18 years in the Federal Prison. Scared, he called a Federal and State Criminal Defense Lawyer for advice and said someone is extorting him and if he does not come up with the money in 48 hours, they will forward so called illegal files that our stored in his computer to the Government ! The Attorney told him he did not take cases like that and he didn't have any information on what Lawyer he know's might be interested ? My Friend said he thought it was strange and that made him panic more and he decided the next morning he was going straight to a U.S Attorney's Office. At 8 am he walked in and when the U.S Attorney came out an greeted him, he was to the point, I am the last person probably you want to see, go talk to the FBI first so he did ! He said at 10 am a Agent came in behind a bullet proof window with no light in the booth and much just a silouette and started to ask direct questions . When it was all said and done the Agent claimed they did not know what was going on but will investigate and did not offer any further assistance ! My friend said when he told them How could he unfreeze his computer they said they would have to get that information to him and they will call him at home and let him know ! While he was leaving the FBI Agent had him on hold for a minute at one of the gates and rushed out and handed him instructions to get rid of this Trojan Virus. As he read the instructions on downloading the software from another computer and rebooting, ect...... on and on he said, this is going to cost me some money to get rid of this bug. My friend said he felt helpless and when he got home and turned on his computer the pop-up window was gone his computer was back to normal ?  What's really Going On ? or do we really want to know ?