|
The FBI investigates every type of crime and fraud you can imagine. Unfortunately, with more and more people using the internet these days, there are quite a number of internet scams and crimes out there. They include: cyber crimes, phishing scams, computer hacking, extortion, theft of trade secrets, pyramid scams, card fraud, health care and real estate scams, international money laundering and possibly one of the fastest growing crimes especially related to internet type scams; identity theft.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is constantly investigating fraud and scammers. The problem is that it is hard for the agency to protect the victims because the scammers work so hard fine-tuning their internet scams. Another reason why it is difficult to protect against cyber crime is because it is often long after the scam has been perpetrated that the person even realizes that they were victimized. This leaves little evidence to follow and/or track because the scammer has typically taken careful measures to cover their tracks.
The Bureau has always dealt with fraud to some degree, from insurance fraud to telemarketing and credit card fraud, as well as many other scams and schemes. But as we all know, in today's ever growing technical world, the internet is making it easier for more and more elaborate scams to be initiated and even harder for them to be detected. This is why it is important that we keep ourselves updated on fraud and abuse information in order to protect ourselves from card fraud, click fraud and other schemes that are becoming evermore prevalent today on the internet.
In order to make it easier to report any suspected fraudulent activity, the FBI has set up numerous ways for the public to provide them with information. By visiting their website, you can find any contact information that you should need in order to report a complaint. Information and content are constantly being updated to help stop the criminals and their scams.
When you stop and think about it, the internet is actually the scene of the crime when it comes to many of these online scams, so it would stand to reason that in order to do the crime scene investigation properly, several law enforcement agencies and regulatory services would need to band together for the investigation. Especially, since in most of these cases of internet fraud, many of the crimes they entail seem to overlap other cyber crimes. What other law enforcement agency, besides the FBI, could possibly cover the entire jurisdiction needed to investigate these crimes?
As a way to hinder the success of the internet scams and online fraud attempts, the FBI has put together a list of several different things to watch for and ways to avoid the fraud caused by these scammers. It is up to us to constantly check these lists and know what we are up against. It is our responsibility as individuals, to protect our own personal information the best we can, but when and if it is compromised in any way that we feel is fraudulent or suspicious, then it is our responsibility to contact one of the agencies they have developed or our local law enforcement agency to report the suspicion.
|
