A Twin City woman in Virginia suffered from web lover she was dating online. What law enforcement officials know is that the woman went to her new love's aid when he called from a foreign country and lost $ 7,000. Her story is not unique. In fact, these scams are so prevalent nationwide that the FBI has labeled them romance fraud. And according to the FBI's Internet Crime Compliant Center there are just some of various scams that annually rob people of millions of dollars. For example, last year in Virginia there were reported 5, 270 cases when people complained on online fraud attempts. According to FBI, Virginia was ranked as the 11th nationwide in complaints per 100,000 residents. In Tennessee, 3,147 complaints were filed, placing the state 31st in the rankings.
FBI categorized online fraud types. Among them are nondelivery of goods, check fraud, credit card fraud, confidence fraud, financial institutions fraud, identity theft, the Nigerian letter fraud and other.
And in 2007, those Internet crimes cost Americans a hopping $ 239 million - up $ 40 million from the year before, making it the fastest-growing crime worldwide. As the holiday season is coming the online commerce is booming and the cyber crimes significantly rise up. And it is expected that cyber criminals will do whatever they can in order to steal the money and personal information of online users. They will try many different ways to commit these crimes even the romance fraud.
So the federal government is expanding efforts to spread the message to all citizens about their best defense: click with caution. However, if online fraudsters hit you, FBI encourages you to file a compliant with the Internet Crime Compliant Center at http://www.ic3.gov.
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