March 19, 2007

The FBI is releasing its internet fraud crime report.

Overall, online crime is down from last year but thieves are still taking advantage of people over the web.

The number one reported online crime remains internet auction fraud. Also complaints over online purchases never being delivered are on the rise.

The FBI's internet crime complaint center released stats from last year.
They said they received over 207,492 complaints. That’s down slightly from last year’s 231,493 complaints.

45% of those complaints last year were about auction fraud.

A lot of this is crime originating in Romania making it difficult to track down the suspects.

Authorities say the criminals will pose as U.S. citizens and have saturated the auctions with every in-demand product but when the money is wired the product never shows up.

That’s just one of many scams reported. Victims lost the most money to the Nigerian letter scam last year. The FBI said on average victims lost $5,100 to that scam.

Males were more likely to be victims. The FBI said 61% of victims were men. They also said males lost more money than women. On average those scammed lost about $700. Overall Americans were scammed out of nearly $200,000,000 last year.