FBI exposes massive online racket

FBI officials have smashed an internet scam that successfully duped around 56,000 Americans out of $117m.

The ten-day sweep, code named 'cyber loss', resulted in the arrests of 90 individuals in 28 US cities who committed crimes ranging from email and wireless fraud to money laundering and bank fraud.

The fraudulent schemes also included scams conducted on auction sites including eBay and Yahoo!

ebay claimed that there was one case of fraud for every 40,000 transactions last year and saw one such case where ten victims paid $110,000 each for classic cars that never arrived.

The most popular categories subject to auction fraud were surprisingly Beanie Babies and more expectedly videos, cameras and laptop computers which accounted for most money losses.

The sweep was to highlight its fledgling crime complaint unit, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, which it operates in conjunction with non-profit, government-funded organization the National White Collar Crime Center.

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