Pictured: Missing Exchange Student Kai Zhuang Emerges From Tent in Cold Utah Mountains After Cyber Kidnapping

Police have released pictures and video from their rescue of Kai Zhuang, a missing teenage foreign exchange student who was saved from a tent set up in a woods on a remote Utah mountainside.

Zhuang, 17, was located in the Brigham City Canyon, within the western slopes of the Wellsville Mountains.

Authorities had been searching for Kai since Friday, when the Utah Department of Public Safety issued an Endangered Missing Person Advisory.

Cops said the search started after his parents reported receiving a ransom note. Chief Casey Warren said Riverdale Police were contacted at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday by officials at the boy's high school, who had heard from his parents in China.

"The parents reported to school officials they received a photograph of their child that would indicate he was abducted and they requested a ransom," Warren said.

An initial investigation failed to turn up evidence of an abduction.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations defines virtual or cyber kidnapping as an extortion scheme that tricks victims into paying a ransom for a relative who hasn't actually been physically kidnapped. "Instead, through deceptions and threats, they coerce victims to pay a quick ransom before the scheme falls apart," reads the FBI's site.

When police found the freezing teen, he told them he was staying there under the direction of his captors.

Police have recovered several phones believed to have been used in the cyber kidnapping.

The student was cleared by medical personnel at the scene and checked for hyperthermia.

Police said he was concerned for his family's safety and called them as they were taking him back home.