Criminal Defense News

Internet Crime A Look at Growing Trends

On 4/6, top FBI exec Chris Swecker was one of a series of witnesses to testify at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet...and what’s being done about it.

At nearly exactly the same time, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3—a partnership of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center—released its annual statistics on Internet Crime.

Coincidence? Actually, yes. But although Swecker’s statement and IC3's report cover different aspects of the issue, both are aimed at one thing: providing the latest insights into the nature and extent of Internet-based crime...and what the FBI and its partners are doing to curtail it.

One thing’s for sure: the numbers are up, in a big way. The IC3 says that the volume of complaints it received online in 2005 (231,493, to be exact) and the total dollar losses arising from referred cases (more than $183 million) are at all-time highs. More complaints were filed in the final three months of 2005 than in any other quarter in the past six years. While Internet auction fraud was again the most reported offense, IC3 says that complaints about phishing, spoofing, and spam all increased during the year. We encourage you to read the full report for all the telling details.

And what about the sexual exploitation of children via the Internet? Same story. Mr. Swecker said our Innocent Images program dedicated to stopping online child predators has grown “exponentially,” with our caseload rising over two thousand percent, from 113 investigations in 1996 to 2,500 in 2005. The Cyber tipline operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the FBI, and other partners has also seen a 400 percent growth in reports filed in its eight years of operation.

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	Did You Know?
	Plea Bargaining - a process whereby the prosecutor and defense attorney negotiate Process whereby the prosecutor and defense attorney negotiate a mutually satisfactory disposition of the case. The court and the defendant must approve of any settlements. For example, a guilty plea may be exchanged for a lesser charge or a sentencing recommendation, or for dismissal of one or more of the charges in a multi-count information, or for dismissal of another case.