So, I'm roosting on the couch half asleep last weekend when what passes for a telephone nowadays rings, or rather, ooodle-ooodle-ooodles -- a constant electronic reminder that America, indeed, is on a fast ride in a handbasket.
It was an automated call from my bank, its robot voice telling me somebody in Boondeer, Mich., I think it was, had tried a few hours earlier to use my check card number to boost about $400 worth of goodies from a Wal-Mart. The bank was trying to determine whether that person was me.
A nice lady came on and said the bank declined the transaction. She did not know whether the pesky criminal had been caught, beaten, or, even better, shot trying to escape. I was hoping for all three.
This was not my first fraud rodeo. Last year, a store in Missouri sold somebody claiming to be me more than $400 worth of underwear using my credit card number. Underwear? I haven't bought $400 in underwear in my life.
How much of this goes on? I wondered. I'm just a schmo living here in the Frozen North and twice that I know of -- or that my bank knows of -- somebody, someplace else, has pretended to be me.
It turns out, it could have been much worse.
Cybercrooks bilk U.S. taxpayers and consumers out of between $559 million and $100 billion a year, depending on who's talking. That uncertainty is the first hurdle in combating the crime. Nobody is certain how much of it is going on or the cost, and, oddly, banks and agencies tend to report the offenses differently. Some, it turns out, even leave out the amount of money involved.
To sort all that out, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center was established in 2000 as a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center, or NW3C, and the FBI. Its annual report will make your hair stand on end.
For 2009, there were 336,655 complaints, up 22.3 percent over 2008, continuing a steady upward trend. Those numbers include, mind you, only reports made to the center, which refers complaints to law enforcement. Those referrals jumped to 146,663 in 2009, up from 72,940 the previous year.
Nationally, more than 76 percent of the crooks who could be identified were male. About half lived California, New York, Florida, Texas, the District of Columbia or Washington. About two-thirds worldwide were in the United States, but many were in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Canada, Malaysia, China and South Africa.
The favorite scams? Non-delivery of merchandise and/or payment was the crime most referred to police. It was followed by identity theft; credit/debit card fraud; auction fraud; computer damage; miscellaneous frauds; advanced fee fraud (the old Nigerian letter fraud), overpayment fraud; scams with FBI in their names; and spam.
Those ripped off in this country generally were male, between 40-49 years of age and lived in California, Florida, Texas or New York. They reported higher losses. (Alaska, by the way, was No. 1 in complaints, per capita, at about 486 per 100,000, perhaps because of our Internet buying.) Guys lost more money than women ($1.51 to $1) and they were fleeced mostly in e-mails or on Web pages. Worldwide, 92.02 percent of the victims last year lived in the United States.
There are new scams every day. The center's director, Donald Brackman, got it right when he said, "Internet crime is evolving in ways we couldn't have imagined just five years ago."
In Alaska, the stats for 2008 -- the last year available -- show the Top 5 complaints were: Non-delivery of merchandise/payment; auction fraud; credit card fraud; confidence fraud; and, check fraud.
Complainants in Alaska -- 74 percent of them women, 26 percent men -- were between 20 and 59 years of age. The biggest reported loss in the state during 2008, the report says, was $41,538.
If you get a chance, look at the center's annual report at www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx. It should make you nervous.
We live in a free country and pay a price for our openness. Protect yourself, be careful about who you do business with on the Internet and remember the old saw: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Oh, and if you run across a guy with a trunkload of undies, let me know.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.
Paul Jenkins
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