Internet Frauds

The term "Internet fraud" refers generally to any type of fraud scheme that uses one or more components of the Internet - such as chat rooms, e-mail, message boards, or Web sites - to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to other connected with the scheme.

The major types of Internet fraud that law enforcement and regulatory authorities and consumer organizations are seeing are:
Auction and Retail Schemes Online,
Business Opportunity/"Work-at-Home" Schemes Online,
Identity Theft and Fraud, and many others.

Judging by the sheer number of solicitations and "can't miss" propositions that you can see every day in your e-mail mailbox or posted on message boards or Web sites, Internet scams may seem inescapable. We can deal with that by remembering that just because something appears on the Internet - no matter how impressive or professional the Web site looks - doesn't mean it's true. Furthermore, we should be very careful about giving out valuable personal data online. If someone sends you an e-mail in which he refuses to disclose his full identity, or uses an e-mail header that has no useful identifying data, that may be an indication that the person doesn't want to leave any information that could allow you to contact them later if you have a dispute over undelivered goods for which you paid.

If you think that you've been the victim of a fraud scheme that involved the Internet, you can file a complaint online with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. In addition, you can file complaints about specific types of fraud complaints with the following agencies:
Commodities Fraud: Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ,
Consumer Fraud: Federal Trade Commission,
Securities Fraud: SEC Enforcement Division Complaint Center or your state securities regulators.


Literature: http://www.internetfraud.usdoj.gov/