Online crime at second highest in decade

CUNA - FAIRMONT, W.Va. (3/4/11)--Just how pervasive has Internet crime become? In 2010, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 303,809 complaints--the second-highest total in IC3's 10-year history and an average of 25,317 complaints per month.

IC3, a repository for victim complaints, is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). It has received more than two million Internet crime complaints since it was established in 2000.
The three most common complaints:

• Nondelivery of payment or merchandise (14.4% of complaints);
• Scams using the FBI's name (13.2%); and
• Identity theft (9.8%).
  

Others included: computer crimes, 9.1%; miscellaneous fraud, 8.6%; advance fee fraud, 7.6%; spam, 6.9%; auction fraud, 5.9%; credit card fraud, 5.3%; and overpayment fraud, 5.3%.

Of those with dollar losses reported, 21.1% related to non-delivery of payment or merchandise; 16.6% were identity theft, 10.1% were auction fraud, and 9.3% were credit card fraud.