Consumers filed 275,284 complaints with the Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2008, marking a 33.1% increase over 2007, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation reported yesterday.
The FBI forwarded 72,940 of the complaints to federal, state and local law enforcement for further investigation, the agency said.
The total dollar loss from all the referred cases of fraud was $264.6 million with a median dollar loss of $931 per complaint, according to the FBI. This is up from $239.1 million in total reported losses in 2007, the FBI reported.
The median dollar loss in 2007 per complaint was $680, according to the FBI.
Not surprisingly, e-mail was by far the No. 1 way scammers found their victims, accounting for 74% of initial contacts, the report said. Web pages were No. 2 at 28.9%, according to the report.
Men were far more likely to be perpetrators—accounting for 77.4% of complaints—than women, and were somewhat more likely to be complainants, accounting for 55.4% of those, the report said.
Also, for every dollar women lost in online scams in 2008, men lost $1.69, up slightly from $1.67 in 2007.
Non-delivered merchandise and/or payment was by far the most reported offense, accounting for 32.9% of referred complaints, the report said. Internet auction fraud accounted for 25.5% of referred complaints and credit/debit card fraud made up 9% of referred complaints, the report said.
And with all the press it gets, Nigerian 419, or advanced-fee, fraud accounted for just 2.8% of referred complaints, according to the report.
As for where the perpetrators tend to live, the District of Columbia, Nevada, Washington, Montana, Florida and Delaware have the highest per capita rate of perpetrators in America, the report said.
