The number of fraud complaints lodged with the Internet Crime Complaint Center actually fell in 2012, but the amount of alleged losses to victims rose.
The IC3, a partnership between the FBI, National White Collar Crime Center and Bureau of Justice Assistance, reported Tuesday in its annual "Internet Crime Report" that it received 289,874 complaints last year. That was down from 2011, when it received more than 310,000. But the unverified losses that victims claimed in 2012 jumped 8.3 percent from the $485 million the previous year.
The most common complaints involved emails scams impersonating the FBI, "intimidation" incidents and scareware schemes that try to sell fake anti-virus by claiming the victim's computer is infected.
