Impostor Scams Surpass ID Theft Among U.S. Consumer Complaints: FTC
Source: NY Times
(Reuters) - More U.S. consumers complained about imposter scams than identity theft for the first time in 2016, as fraudsters relied more on the phone and less on email to find victims, the Federal Trade Commission said on Friday.
Impostor scams accounted for 406,578 of the 3,050,374 consumer complaints received in 2016 by the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network, just above the 399,225 received for identity theft, the agency said.
Debt collection generated 859,090, or 28 percent, of all complaints, more than any other category. Complaints overall fell 3 percent from the record 3,140,803 set a year earlier.
The FTC attributed the rise in impostor scam complaints to more fraudsters pretending to be trustworthy government officials, like from the Internal Revenue Service demanding payment of taxes.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/03/03/technology/03reuters-usa-ftc-scams.html