As part of National Consumer Protection Week, officials from federal, state and city agencies gathered recently to alert consumers about last year’s most prevalent scams.
Authorities gathered at the U.S. Customs House at Bowling Green in Manhattan on Thursday, March 5, to reveal their figures, and encourage people to avoid pitfalls.
For the ninth year in a row, identity theft is the No.1 consumer complaint nationwide, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report from their Consumer Sentinel Network, a secure online database of consumer complaints available only to law enforcement.
More than 1.22 million complaints were logged in and tabulated on the network last year, not only from FTC offices, but agencies like the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Canada’s Phone Busters, Better Business Bureaus and others.
Cyber-scams are the most prevalent – more than half of all swindles initiated by email and only one in seven arrive in the mailbox. When you add in the cons found on web sites, instant messages and the like, almost two-thirds of consumer complaints are computer generated.
By state, New Yorkers live up to their wary reputation, coming in 39th out of 50 states when it comes to rate of fraud and other complaints, but we rate in the top 10 (No. 6) in complaints of identity theft.
While all the warnings about credit card fraud have had a positive effect – credit card identity fraud dropped from 25 to 20 percent of FTC reported complaints from 2006 to 2008 – the IRS opened a door by encouraging people to file their income taxes electronically.
Identity thieves are ripping-off more Americans than ever by filing false tax returns. From 2006, tax form complaints nearly doubled, from 6.3 percent to 12.2 percent of identity theft reports.
Complaints have dropped in other areas in the last two years, especially fraudulent electronic funds transfers from bank accounts (from 8 to 4.6 percent) and new wireless phone accounts (from 7.2 to 4.1 percent.)
According to the report, last year, the 20- to 29-year age group was the most scammed, logging in 24 percent of complaints.
The complaint numbers drop off more and more rapidly by the decade, with 60- to 69-year-olds making half the complaints of those 10 years younger (7 versus 14 percent) perhaps pointing to the value of life experience, or to the fact that it’s harder for an identity thief to pass themselves off as an older person.
However, one figure that can only be affected by the victims is “Law Enforcement Contact.” Last year, 65 percent of identity theft victims did not notify a Police Department, according to the report. Only 27 percent of identity theft complainants called the police and made a report.
The FTC maintains a web site at www.ftc.gov/idtheft that is a one-stop national resource where consumers can learn about the crime of identity theft. It provides detailed information to help consumers protect themselves from identity theft, and the steps to take if it occurs.
