If you have received a form of fraudulent contact, as described above, you may wish to file a complaint at http://www.ic3.gov.  This is the official website of the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a joint partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center has received over 2,000,000 complaint submissions as of November 2010, according to one of the center’s press releases.  As reported by its 2009 Internet Crime Report, the vast majority of cases referred to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies contained elements of fraud and involved a financial loss by the complainant. The total dollar loss from all cases of fraud in 2009 that were referred to law enforcement by the center was $559.7 million.

Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has set up a national resource website which provides detailed information to help you deter, detect, and defend against identity theft, as well as learn what to do if your identity is stolen. The FTC also collects complaints from the military community and makes them available only to law enforcement - civil, criminal, and military. Whether your complaint concerns identity theft, deceptive lending or mortgage practices, debt collection, phone fraud, or some other scam, your complaints help the FTC and the Department of Defense identify and target problems that affect you in the marketplace. To visit the FTC Consumer Sentinel, click here. 

You may also visit the official website of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force for more information on how to protect yourself from various fraudulent schemes. This task force was established by President Obama in November 2009 to improve efforts across the government to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes and fraudulent schemes in the lending and financial markets.  With more than 20 federal agencies, 94 US Attorneys Offices and state and local partners, this task force is the broadest coalition of law enforcement, investigatory and regulatory agencies ever assembled to combat fraud. The Task Force has established Financial Fraud Coordinators in every U.S. Attorney’s Office around the country to help make these broad mandates a reality on the ground.