Fraud.com

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 26, 2000 | by Jerry Seper

The Justice Department has established an Internet fraud center and Website to help consumers and cops identify online con artists.

More Americans are falling victim to fraud on the Internet every day, according to Attorney General Janet Reno, who has opened a "one-stop shopping" center to identify Internet fraud schemes. The Internet Fraud Complaint Center, or IFCC, will provide law enforcement with a centralized information center to identify online con artists and refer them to the proper law-enforcement agency.

The IFCC, to be based in Morgantown, W. Va., will give consumers and merchants the means "to report fraudulent activity being committed utilizing the Internet," according to Assistant FBI Director Rubin Garcia, who heads the bureau's criminal division. Computer crimes fall into two main categories, says Garcia -- those intended to impair, damage or alter computer systems and those meant to defraud.

"Internet fraud is defined as any instance in which any one or more components of the Internet -- such as Websites, the chat rooms, e-mail -- play a significant role in offering nonexistent goods or services to customers, in communicating false or fraudulent representations about schemes to consumers, in transmitting victims' funds, or any other items of value, to the control of the scheme's perpetrator," says Garcia.

The IFCC first will focus on cases in which computers are used to commit a crime on the Internet. "The frauds being committed today over the Internet are the same type of frauds the FBI has traditionally investigated, such as telemarketing fraud, money laundering, gambling and securities fraud," says Garcia. "However, the Internet poses an additional concern and challenge because of the nature of the virtual environment. The Internet does not have the boundaries as seen in traditional fraud schemes, and the traditional methods of detecting, reporting and investigating fraud are ineffective in this virtual environment."

The Justice Department also had created a secure World Wide Web site (www.ifccfbi.gov) to allow consumers to file complaints online. "Law-enforcement authorities have told us they need a nationwide mechanism to gather and review these types of Internet-related complaints," Reno said during a recent press conference announcing the IFCC and Website. "Today's center is that stop on the information superhighway where law enforcement and consumers can meet and make the road safer for us all."

The Justice Department's ongoing Internet Fraud Initiative already has targeted the 18,000 complaints filed last year with the Federal Trade Commission on Internet consumer fraud and the 200 to 300 complaints filed daily at the Securities and Exchange Commission on suspected securities fraud. "Thanks to the initiative, we now prosecute criminals who steal credit-card numbers online and use them to make purchases without the victims' knowledge" Reno said. "We now pursue con artists who offer bogus products at online auctions. We now go after people who disseminate false information online about a company to artificially manipulate stock prices for their own profit. And we now are prosecuting identity thieves, who steal personal information about someone else and use it as their own."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., is training hundreds of prosecutors and FBI agents, as well as foreign investigators, in Internet fraud. The United States and other leading industrial nations are planning a comprehensive response to the problem that will focus on prevention, investigation, prosecution, conviction and sentencing.

RELATED ARTICLE: Awards to Set Standard for Online Journalism

Internet journalism is going legit. Columbia University, which also doles out Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards, has established the Online Journalism Awards in conjunction with the Online News Association, or ONA. Cyberscribes who manage to maintain their credibility while pushing the gonzo excitement of a new medium will get their rewards come December.

The prizes "will help set the standards in the world for online journalism," says Tom Goldstein, dean of Columbia's journalism school. But it will be no easy task. A vexing paradox has been at work for years in this media hybrid, which remains very much a work in progress.

On one hand, the field's high-tech immediacy fosters vitality among journalists who cover events that are alive and kicking. Readers talk back, electronic links are forged, instant polls created. The Internet is suited beautifully to breaking news, war correspondence, courtroom scenes and gossipy tidbits that can explode into monster exclusives.

This same immediacy, however, has caused abuse and angst. The siren call of "Get it first" often impedes the traditional credo of "Get it right." Several major newspapers have been burned in their zeal to rush a story online minus editing or fact checking.

After demonstrating what not to do, newly chastened online journalists now seem to be entering a self-examining phase. The ONA was founded in 1999 by some 30 editors and writers bent on high-minded principles such as "editorial integrity" and "journalistic excellence." In addition, the Online Journalism Review (www.ojr.com), produced by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, has offered pithy content and strategic suggestions for two years. The review already has published 15 specific suggestions for online journalists, admonishing them to beware of such bugaboos as gossip, ad intrusion, invasion of privacy and careless reporting.