FBI Reports Record Financial Losses to Cybercrime

Via DarkReading -

The U.S. economy may be tanking, but the cybercrime economy is booming, according to the latest report from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Dollar losses to cybercrime increased to $240 million in 2007, a $40 million jump from 2006, according to the IC3's newly released 2007 Internet Crime Report. The IC3 received 206,884 reports of Internet crime last year, 90,000 of which were then picked up by law enforcement, according to the report.

And that’s not including the cybercrimes that went unreported to the IC3.

"The Internet presents a wealth of opportunity for would-be criminals to prey on unsuspecting victims, and this report shows how extensive these types of crime have become," said FBI Cyber Division assistant director James E. Finch in a prepared statement. "What this report does not show is how often this type of activity goes unreported. Filing a complaint through IC3 is the best way to alert law enforcement authorities of Internet crime."

The biggest culprit was online auction fraud. Other fraud includes purchases that were never delivered, credit card and debit card fraud, and computer breaches, spam, and child pornography.

Some interesting demographics: 75.8 percent of the bad guys were men, most from the U.S. Here in the States, California, Florida, New York, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Georgia claimed the most offenders. The U.K., Nigeria, Canada, Romania, and Italy were also well represented.

Nearly 60 percent of the victims who reported their losses to the IC3 were men -- half between the ages of 30 and 50, and most from the U.S. And men lost more money than women, according to the report, with $1.67 to every $1 lost per woman. Why the difference? The IC3 speculates in its report that it may be "a function of both online purchasing differences by gender and the type of fraudulent schemes by which the individuals were victimized." (Read: Guys buy more expensive toys.)

Some 73.6 percent of the crimes occurred via email contact, and 32.7 percent via Webpages, according to the report. IC3 is a joint effort between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

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Here is the direct PDF link to the 2007 report.