February
13, 2020
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Top Stories
The FTC saw a big spike in romance fraud complaints in 2019
- 2017 16,940
- 2018 22,284
- 2019 38,851
Romance scam losses of $201 million reported to the FTC
in 2019; up 40% from 2018
FBI releases 2019 report for Internet Crime Complaint
Center
- Losses of $3.5 billion reported
- Largest losses by those over 60 years old
- Many more complaints received from the UK than anywhere else outside the US
- Romance scam losses of $475 million
A few trends from the FTC’s 2019 complaint data
- Debt collection complaints fell: From 626K in 2017 to 135K in 2019
- Identity theft complaints way up: 371K in 2017; 650K in 2019
- Imposter scams are way up, but you knew that
- Sweepstakes complaints down; 143K in 2017; 125K 2019 (is enforcement working here?)
- Tech support complaints down: 154K in 2017; 108K 2019
- Travel/vacations up; 17K 2019: 25K 2019
US indicts four members of Chinese military over hacking Equifax credit report information
New scam exploding in the UK: Those selling on eBay are getting emails supposedly from eBay saying that a payment has been made; sellers then ship; 3000 complaints in the last three months; over £1 million lost so far
Texas: Nigerian gets more than eleven years prison for laundering BEC money; four others also sentenced
Southern District of Illinois: Two executives at Florida tech support scam get eleven years and nine years prison
