[JURIST] Americans reported a record $183 million lost to Internet fraud in 2005, a 169 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new report published by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) [official website]. In its 2005 Internet Crime Report [PDF text; FBI press release], the IC3, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, reported that the Nigerian letter scam [IC3 backgrounder] accounted for some of the highest losses with an average $5,000 lost per complaint.

Sixty-two percent of complaints received related to Internet auction fraud [IC3 backgrounder] and the median loss for all 231,493 complaints filed in 2005 was $424. The report found that 71 percent of the criminals who could be traced lived in the United States, with the second largest group, 8 percent, living in Nigeria. Hearst News Service has more.