Professor Elam

This came in on our TAMUK e mail, beware Greeks bearing gifts from Washington DC! (Ahem…)

FBI: Internet Fraud Rates Rose 33% Last Year

Consumer complaints to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a joint venture between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, rose by more than 33% in 2008 over the previous year. 

The biggest cause for complaint was the non-delivery of goods and/or payments.  The average dollar loss per complaint was US $931 while the average loss from 419 Advance fee scams was US $1,650. 

Some 275,284 complaints were filed last year with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). In 2007, the IC3 received 206,844 complaints.

The report shows that the nation's capital appears to be home to the largest concentration of online con artists in the country. The District of Columbia ranks #1, just ahead of Nevada and Washington State, in terms of online fraud perpetrators per 100,000 residents, the IC3 found.

The total dollar loss from all 72,940 cases of fraud referred to federal, state and local law enforcement was $246.6 million, with a median dollar loss of $931 per complaint — up from $239.1 million in total reported losses in 2007.

Texas ranked second in the number of complaintants per state, and fourth in the number of perpetrators per state; however, Texas ranked 28^th in the number of complainants per 100,000 citizens in a state, and 26^th in the number of perpetrators per 100,000 citizens.

The full report is available at http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/2008_IC3Report.pdf

( Copies of the 2007 and 2008 reports have been uploaded to the TX-ISAC Library under InfoSec Trend Surveys/ FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center.)