$239M USD Lost to Internet Fraud in 2007

[JasonF]

The report’s statistics are drawn from complaints it chose to refer which, collectively had a “median dollar loss” of $680.00, totaling the report's banner figure of $239 million. This figure was up 20% over last year’s $198.4 million.

 

Scammers living in the U.S. generally hail from California, Florida, Texas, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Georgia, says the IC3, while scammers living outside the country most often lived in the UK, Nigeria, Canada, Romania, or Italy.

 

male “complainants” generally lost more money than females: complaints filed by men were generally for amounts two thirds higher: $1.67 for every $1.00 per female.

 

E-mail continues to be the leading source of internet fraud, with over 60 percent of complaints revolving around auction fraud and non-delivery.

 

Scammers tend to prey on victims’ sense of emotion, and 2007 was no different: the prevailing scams of the year included fake pet ads, phony romance relationships, and bogus adoption ads – the worst of which promise healthy sums of money to whoever adopts the child from his or her supposedly rich, dying parents.

 

http://www.dailytech.com/239M+USD+Lost+to+Internet+Fraud+in+2007/article11402.htm

[ECF]

Fraud is big business to some people. It is a shame that the merchants actually are the ones who suffer with rate hikes.

 

We have had a few fraud cases where the moron was kind enough to give us their actual phone number which we turned over to our merchant account provider, but Visa/MC did nothing about catching these people.

 

Sad really...

[swish]

but Visa/MC did nothing about catching these people.

 

Sad really...

 

Agree 100%. Seems its just "cheaper" to just write it off then to actully pursue charges.

[adamnp]

same reason DoS flourishes

[JasonF]

I know what you mean ECF. I had a purchase who's personal info was listed as New York but their IP was Venezuela. I got the credit card company's phone number from CDGCommerce and I called them. I basically said someone tried to use this credit card illegally on my website, you may want to notify the credit card's owner about the issue. They were acting like I was wasting their time.

[Defcon|Rich]

Yup, Pretty sad. We see on average 1-2 fraudulent order attempts come through every week. The chargebacks aren't an issue as we catch them before that point but either way it still costs $$ to have the systems in place.