Internet-based rip-offs jumped 33 percent
To a total loss of $265 million in 2008. Americans filed 275,284 reports claiming to be ripped off on the Internet, the highest number reported since the National Internet Crime Center (www.nw3c.org) began keeping statistics in 2000. The top three most frequent complaints were about merchandise that wasn’t delivered or payment that wasn’t received, Internet auction fraud and credit/debit card fraud. Other scams include confidence frauds such as Ponzi schemes, check fraud, the Nigerian letter fraud and identity fraud. The report said that about 77.4 percent of perpetrators of Internet fraud were men, and about half lived in either California, New York, Florida, Washington, Texas or the District of Columbia. More than 55 percent of those who filed complaints were men. I have experienced that the geographic spread between victims and suspects creates a lot of issues in the apprehension of perpetrators. Add a waterfall of low dollar -low priority- cases and anonymity via internet to the equation and you have a tough challenge for law enforcement. By the way; this type of crime is in a lot of cases demand driven; people search for hours to find the rock bottom price on internet. Believe it or not; there is no such thing as free lunch. A lower price usually comes with an increase in risk. I am preaching to the choir if you read this.
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/index.html
http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/internet.crime/index.html
