FBI Mobile Command Center in Washington DC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Michael Cooney – The 2011 IC3 Internet Crime Report (pdf) issued found that of the 314,246 complaints the IC3 received last year over 14,000 involved scamsters posing as the FBI in one shady online form or another. The 314,246 complaints represent a 3.4% increase over 2010.
The IC3 said the top five crimes included:
- FBI-related Scams – Scams in which a criminal poses as the FBI to defraud victims.
- Identity Theft- Unauthorized use of a victim’s personal identifying information to commit fraud or other crimes.
- Advance Fee Fraud- Criminals convince victims to pay a fee to receive something of value, but do not deliver anything of value to the victim.
- Non-Auction/Non-Delivery of Merchandise – Purchaser does not receive items purchased.
- Overpayment Fraud – An incident in which the complainant receives an invalid monetary instrument with instructions to deposit it in a bank account and send excess funds or a percentage of the deposited money back to the sender.
more> http://tinyurl.com/88btp32
Related articles
- ID Theft, Online Fraud Rose Slightly In 2011 (informationweek.com)
- IC3 annual report for 2011 released (fraudpreventionunit.org)
