Economic Crime Journal

Economic Crime Journal

Dr. David Murphy is a Certified Fraud Specialist and Certified Public Accountant and is a member of the Board of Regents of the Association of Certified Fraud Specialists. In addition, he has served as the Senior Anti-corruption Advisor to the Controller General of Peru and the government of Bulgaria. He was also the director of a two-year USAID anti-corruption graduate education project in Bolivia and consulted to the Central Bank of the Philippines in the wake of a major bank fraud in Manila.

Other Posts:

How to Catch Fraudulent Financial Reporting (11/16/2009)
ASIS Economic Crime Council Highlights LC's Program (11/06/2009)
Fraud on Steroids (10/19/2009)
U.S. Banking Fraud Interview (04/27/2009)
Financial Statement Fraud (04/17/2009)
Fraud Close to Home (03/27/2009)
Can Economic Crime Be Eliminated? (03/20/2009)
Madoff and Ponzi (03/26/2009)
New Credit Card Scam (05/01/2008)

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that internet fraud  rose 10.5 percent in 2008 to over $264 million.  The total volume of cases reported rose 33.1 percent to 275,284 cases.  The IC3, which refers complaints to law enforcement agencies, was organized in 2000 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). 

IC3 2008 report indicates that the United States is the largest source of crime perpetrators based on complaints (66.1 percent) with a reported location, followed by the United Kingdom (10.5 percent), Nigeria (7.5 percent), Canada (3.1 percent) and with China rounding out the top five at 1.6 percent of the complaints.

 
The most common source of fraud complaints were:

·         Non-delivery of merchandise or non-delivery of payment (32.9 percent)

·         Auction fraud (25.5 percent)

·         Credit/debit card fraud (9 percent)

·         Confidence fraud such as Ponzi schemes (7.9 percent)

·         Computer fraud 6.2 percent)

·         Check fraud (5.4 percent)

·         Nigerian letter fraud (2.8 percent)

·         Identify theft (2.5 percent)

·         Financial institution fraud (2.2 percent), and

·         Criminal threats (1.9 percent).

The apparent top 10 states, accounting for about 62 percent of the internet fraud complaints in the United States, were  California, New York, Florida, Texas, Washington, D.C., Washington state, Illinois, Georgia, New Jersey, and Arizona. 

The IC3 has launched a public web site, LooksTooGoodToBeTrue.com, where consumers can get advice about how to recognize different forms of online fraud.