Big Boost In Net Crimes
Internet crimes reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center increased by more than 22 percent in 2009 over the previous year, the center reported Friday. The center, a partnership between the FBI and National White Collar Crime Center, received a total of 336,655 complaints last year and reported total losses linked to online fraud of nearly $560 million - more than double 2008's amount, according to its annual Internet Crime Report.
The top reported Internet-related crime, representing 16.6 percent of the complaints, involved e-mail scams in which the scammer pretended to be with the FBI in order to gain information from the recipient. This was followed by complaints (11.9 percent) involving the failure of an online firm to deliver merchandise or of a buyer to pay a firm for a product or service.
The other top five types of complaints involved advanced fee fraud in which a scammer requests money upfront for some reward but fails to deliver; identity theft; and overpayment fraud, which occurs when a scammer gives a victim a fraudulent monetary instrument above an agreed upon amount for a transaction and asks that the difference be paid with a legitimate form of payment.
"The figures contained in this report indicate that criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet," National White Collar Crime Center Director Donald Brackman said in a statement. "They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers. Internet crime is evolving in ways we couldn't have imagined just five years ago."
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