Occurrences of internet fraud in the USA

Byline: Kai S. Koong, Lai C. Liu, Shuming Bai, June Wei While it is true that the internet has helped businesses reach customers who were previously not accessible, it has also opened up another opportunity for fraud. This study examines the occurrences of online fraud and where they were committed for the period 2002 through 2006. Several interesting trends were found to exist in the data set. First and as expected, the number of online fraud complaints was high in states and geographic regions with large populations. However, when the population was factored in, the trends were quite different. Second, 2006 was the first year that contained some evidences of a decline in the number of cases reported. Even among states and regions that had high incidences of complaints, the growth rates appear to be levelling off.