FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center Releases Stats

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), announced that it received over 231,000 complaints from January 1 through December 31, 2005, an 11.6 percent increase over 2004. These filings were composed of fraudulent and non-fraudulent complaints primarily related to the Internet.

In 2005, IC3 processed more than 228,400 complaints that could lead to Internet crime investigations by law enforcement and regulatory agencies nationwide.  These complaints were composed of many different fraud types such as auction fraud, non-delivery, and credit/debit card fraud, as well as non-fraudulent complaints, such as computer intrusions, spam/unsolicited email, and child pornography. All of these complaints are accessible to federal, state, and local law enforcement to support active investigations, trend analysis, and public outreach and awareness efforts.

The vast majority of cases were fraudulent in nature and involved a financial loss on the part of the complainant.  The total dollar loss from all referred cases of fraud was $183.12 million with a median dollar loss of $424 per complaint. This is up from $68 million in total reported losses in 2004. Other significant findings include: 

• Internet auction fraud was the most reported offense, comprising 62.7 percent of referred complaints. 
  
• PF those individuals who reported a dollar loss, the highest median losses were found among Nigerian letter fraud ($5,000) and check fraud ($3,800).
  
• Among perpetrators, more than 75 percent were male and half resided in CA, NY, FL, TX, IL, PA, and OH. The majority of reported perpetrators were from the United States, although a significant number also were located in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, and China.
  
• Males lost more money than females. This may be a function of both online purchasing differences by gender and the type of fraudulent schemes by which the individuals were victimized.
  
• E-mail and web pages were the two primary mechanisms by which the fraudulent contact took place.  In all, 73.2 percent of complainants reported that they had e-mail contact with the perpetrator and 16.5 percent ad contact through a web page.

The IC3 2005 Internet Crime Report is the fifth annual compilation of information on complaint received and referred by IC3 to law enforcement or regulatory agencies for appropriate action. The results provide and examination of key characteristics of 1) complaints, 2) perpetrators, 3) complainants, 4) interaction between perpetrators and complainants, and 5) success stories involving complainants by IC3.  This report does not represent all victims of Internet fraud, or fraud in general, because it is derived solely form individuals who files a report with IC3.

For a copy of the report, visit www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx.