Gartner: Financial Fraud Hits 7.5 Percent of U.S. Adults

[Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster () gmail com>]

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Via C|Net News.

[snip]

About 7.5 percent of U.S. adults lost money as a result of financial fraud
last year, mostly due to data breaches, according to a new Gartner study to
be released on Tuesday night.

In the survey of nearly 5,000 consumers, 70 percent said they had never
been a victim of identity theft fraud. Meanwhile 14 percent said they had
had their credit card information used to charge purchases or get money, 7
percent said their debit card was used, 6 percent said a new account had
been opened in their name, 5 percent had money transferred out of their
account, and 4 percent had had checks forged.

Recovering losses was easier for people victimized by brokerage, credit
card, and debit card account fraud compared to victims of new loan account
fraud, check forgery, and checking/savings account fraud, partly because
victims didn't try to recover money.

Of those who had new accounts opened in their name, 35 percent suffered
from a damaged credit rating and slightly more than half were able to
restore their rating, usually in less than one month. For about 20 percent
it took more than a year, and for 9 percent it took three to five years,
the survey found.

Overall, less than one-third of the victims reported the crimes to law
enforcement and about 5 percent reported it to the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission.

Not only do many victims not report the crime, but many of the crimes go
unprosecuted. There were only 564 convictions made for about 800
identity-theft-related fraud cases in 2007, according to the National
Institute of Justice's Electronic Crime Program, a part of the U.S. Justice
Department.

"The chances of a criminal getting arrested and convicted for identity
theft-related fraud are much less than a half of 1 percent," the study
said.

[snip]

More:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10186176-83.html

- - ferg

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-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
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