Anthony Weiner has been lambasted as a ‘snake and a pervert’ who took advantage of a ‘mixed up kid,’ by the family of the 23-year-old at the heart of his latest sexting scandal.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, the close family member said: ‘This guy has used and taken advantage of Syd.

‘He’s a grown man. She’s a young girl and kind of a mixed up kid. She’s bright and she’s pretty but she’s got sucked up in this whole ugly thing and this guy’s a snake and a pervert.’

The family member who asked not to be named said: ‘Sydney told her mom she was in some sort of relationship with this guy just a few months ago.

'She said he was ''deeply flawed'' and that he had made her promises he hadn’t kept.'''

According to the relative Sydney’s mother, Laura Leathers, tried to talk her daughter out of the relationship when she heard of it -  though none truly imagined the nature or extent of communications between the mayoral candidate and the political blogger raised in Mount Carmel, Illinois.

He said: ‘The first I heard of it was a call from Sydney’s mom the day it all came out. She just said, ''Google Sydney. You won’t believe what she’s done now.'''

‘Her mom knew there was something going on but none of us could have guessed this.

'Sydney told her mom that she wanted to get something more political out of it but she was frustrated because he wanted to go more down the sexual route.'

The relative did not know what lay behind a change in Sydney’s feelings but said that recently Sydney, who had always been a vocal supporter of Weiner, had expressed the view that he should not be elected.

As soon as the story broke and Sydney’s identity had been revealed, she had been signed up by an attorney and agent and was on a flight out of her Indiana home of Princeton to LA.

She called her mother this morning to say she had landed safely on the West Coast where MailOnline understands she has signed to appear on a major talk show.

Sydney, who had been living with her father in a small apartment in Princeton, was according to friends hungry for fame and fortune.

One has claimed that she boasted of wanting to make $100,000 and claimed that she could ‘ruin someone’s life right now'.

But according to her family member, it is her mother’s life who she has come closest to ruining right now: ‘Her mom is just devastated and so embarrassed and hurt by this.

‘You can’t control your kids, not everything they do, but this is a real blow.

‘It was a blow when Syd dropped out of high school. She was bright. She could have gone to college. And now this?’

Sydney initially lived with her mother following her parents’ divorce but moved in with her father, James who works in Walmart, when her mother ‘pushed her to go to school’ and she just didn’t want to.

In that same year, 2008, she was convicted on the criminal charge of possessing marijuana.

‘There was a lot in Sydney’s life we knew about but didn’t really like,’ the relative said. ‘But she’s basically a good kid and it just blows my mind that Weiner is still running. It’s him we blame.

‘He’s married and he has a baby and he’s already been in trouble. Everybody makes mistakes but come on!

‘Syd’s a very emotional kid. What kid wouldn’t’ be sucked in by who he is? But to see him stand up on television and make his wife stand by his side and tell the nation that she forgave him and she loved him…What sort of man does that?’