The FBI"s Internet fraud unit said the number of complaints it referred to law enforcement authorities tripled last year, as did the cost of fraud to victims. The bureau"s Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), which launched in May 2000 and is managed in part by the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), said it referred 48,252 complaints out of the 75,063 it received last year. That"s nearly three times the 16,775 complaints it referred in 2001.
The monetary loss associated with the fraud more than tripled, to $54 million from $17 million, in the same period. "The IFCC helps victims by putting fraud information into the hands of law enforcement and then fosters interagency cooperation so these complaints are responded to quickly," said Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI"s Cyber Division, in a statement.
Auction fraud led the pack, as it did in 2001 and 2000, accounting for 46 percent of complaints the unit referred to law enforcement in 2002. Online auctioneers have been the target of numerous fraud schemes, ranging from shill bidding, in which sellers bid on their own auctions to artificially jack up the price, to identity-theft schemes.