The District of Columbia is home to more cybercriminals than all but the four largest states, according to a report that says online scams continue to grow.
In 2008, the Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 275,000 complaints for a total loss of $265 million, up from $68 million just four years earlier.
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Seventy-seven percent of the tech-savvy offenders lived in the following jurisdictions: California, New York, Florida, Texas and the District of Columbia, according to the report.
ICCC officials said they weren’t sure why D.C. ranked so high.
“We don’t know of a good explanation except that Washington, D.C., is an area with a lot of government agencies and people are more familiar with ICCC than in other places,” said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson.
The ICCC is a partnership of the FBI and a nonprofit group that tracks white-collar crime. The ICCC forwarded more than 70,000 of the complaints to law enforcement agencies last year.
According to the 2008 report, the District had the fifth-most offenders, Virginia was 16th, and Maryland ranked 18th.
Of the most online complainants, Virginia ranked ninth, Maryland had the 16th most and the District had ranked 44th.
The most popular scam involved items bought online but never delivered.
Auction fraud, like from eBay transactions, actually dipped from 28.6 percent in 2007 to 25.5 percent last year.
Confidence fraud such as Ponzi schemes, computer fraud and check fraud represented 20 percent of all complaints.
The Nigerian letter scheme, identity theft, child pornography and online threats represented less than 10 percent.
One of the biggest new scams in 2008 involved bogus e-mails, supposedly sent by the FBI, soliciting personal information by claiming that it needed such info to investigate an “impending financial transaction.”
Overall, fraud victims reporting average losses of $931 each.
