FTC Releases List of

Top Consumer Fraud Complaints in 2007

The FTC today released the list of top consumer fraud complaints received by the agency in 2007. The list, contained in the publication “Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft Complaint Data January-December 2007,” showed that for the seventh year in a row, identity theft is the number one consumer complaint category. Of 813,899 total complaints received in 2007, 258,427, or 32 percent, were related to identity theft.

The report breaks out complaint data on a state-by-state basis and also contains data about the 50 metropolitan areas reporting the highest per capita incidence of fraud and the 50 metropolitan areas reporting the highest incidence of identity theft.

The report states that credit card fraud was the most common form of reported identity theft at 23 percent, followed by utilities fraud at 18 percent, employment fraud at 14 percent, and bank fraud at 13 percent.

Consumers reported fraud losses totaling more than $1.2 billion; the median monetary loss per person was $349, the report states.

The top 20 complaint categories were:

Rank	Category	Complaints	%
1	Identity Theft	258,427	32
2	Shop-at-Home/Catalog Sales	62,811	8
3	Internet Services	42,266	5
4	Foreign Money Offers	32,868	4
5	Prizes/Sweepstakes and Lotteries	32,162	4
6	Computer Equipment and Software	27,036	3
7	Internet Auctions	24,376	3
8	Health Care Claims	16,097	2
9	Travel, Vacations, and Timeshares	14,903	2
10	Advance-Fee Loans and Credit Protection/Repair	14,342	2
11	Investments	13,705	2
12	Magazines and Buyers Clubs	12,970	2
13	Business Opportunities and Work-at-Home Plans	11,362	1
14	Real Estate (Not Timeshares)	9,475	1
15	Office Supplies and Services	9,211	1
16	Telephone Services	8,155	1
17	Employ. Agencies/Job Counsel/Overseas Work	5,932	1
18	Debt Management/Credit Counseling	3,442	<1
19	Multi-Level Mktg./Pyramids/Chain Letters	3,092	<1
20	Charitable Solicitations	1,843	<1

The FTC collects consumer fraud complaints from more than 125 other organizations and makes them available to more than 1,600 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad via Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database. In 2007, the FTC received almost 140,000 more consumer fraud complaints than in 2006. These additional complaints came from numerous data contributors, primarily the Better Business Bureaus.