By ,
Published January 14, 2015
And you thought your cell-phone bill was steep.
A city councilwoman in a Madrid suburb is out up to $50,000 after her teenaged daughter used her work-provided cellular modem to download several episodes of "Lost" off the Internet, Spain's El Mundo newspaper reports.
The girl apparently couldn't get her family's Wi-Fi signal in her own bedroom. So she borrowed her mother's 3G cellular modem — which the city council of Getafe paid the bill for — to satisfy her TV jones.
"I was absolutely unaware that such usage [using the 3G modem for downloading TV shows] could result in such excessive costs," said the mother, a member of Spain's opposition People's Party, according to the translation provided by TorrentFreak.com. "I have a flat rate plan at my home and something like this has never happened before."
Most cellular modems take the form of a USB stick, which can then be plugged into a laptop or desktop to provide semi-fast Internet access via cellular wireless data networks.
The mother was unaware that her daughter was racking up such a huge bill until she was presented with the tab by the municipality at the end of 2008. She's promised to pay back the city council.
• Click here to read the English translation at TorrentFreak.
• Click here to read the original story in El Mundo.
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https://www.foxnews.com/story/teens-lost-downloads-cost-mom-50000