The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) last week released its 2009 Internet Crime Report, which showed an increase both in complaints and reported losses. The IC3 Web site received 336,655 complaints last year, a 22.3 percent increase from 2008's figure of 275,284 complaints.
Of those complaints, 146,663 were referred to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Those cases represent $559.7 million in dollar losses, more than double the $264.6 million reported in 2008.
More than 16 percent of the claims IC3 received in 2009 involved scammers misrepresenting themselves as FBI representatives in an effort to gain more information from the target.
For more from the report, including ranks of the most common IC3 complaints and the top categories of offenses reported to law enforcement, read the full report (PDF).
IC3 was established in 2000 as a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to handle cybercrime complaints
