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For Immediate Release
April 6 , 2006
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Washington D.C.
FBI National Press Office
(202) 324-3691
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FBI INTERNET CRIME COMPLAINT CENTER RELEASES STATS
FAIRMONT, WV—The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), announced today that it received 231,493 complaints through its on-line web portal, located at www.ic3.gov, from January 1 through December 31, 2005. This figure compares to 124,509 and 207,499 filings received in 2003 and 2004, respectively. These complaints, which are accessible to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, comprise a variety of fraudulent and non-fraudulent offenses, including auction frauds, reshipping schemes, counterfeit check schemes, hacking and computer intrusion attempts, and child pornography web sites.
Today IC3 also released its 2005 Internet Crime Report which offers a snapshot of Internet fraud trends detailing crime types, locations, and victim/perpetrator demographic data gleaned from 97,076 complaints of fraud referred to federal, state and/or local law enforcement authorities last year. The total dollar loss from all referred fraud cases was $183 million, up from $68 million in 2004.
According to the report, Internet auction fraud was the most reported fraudulent offense, comprising 63% of referred complaints. Non-delivery of merchandise and non-payment accounted for 16% of complaints, and credit/debit card fraud made up nearly 7% of fraud complaints. The highest median dollar losses were found among Nigerian letter fraud ($5,000), check fraud ($3,800), and confidence fraud ($2,025) complainants.
California, Florida, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania were the top five states for victims of Internet fraud. In cases where the perpetrator had been identified, over three in four were male and over half resided in the states of California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
The increase in Internet based crime complaints received for 2005 coincides with recent research conducted by NW3C (The 2005 National Public Survey on White Collar Crime) showing that nearly one in two U.S. households was victimized by a white collar crime within the past year.
To obtain a copy of IC3's 2005 Internet Crime Report, visit www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx.
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