Kentucky Ranked in National Fraud & Identify Theft Study

March 3, 2004

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released its National and State Trends in Fraud & Identity Theft report for 2003. During the year, the FTC received more than half a million consumer complaints nationally (516,740), up from 404,000 in 2002. These include 301,835 complaints about fraud and 214,905 identity theft reports. 42% of all complaints received by the FTC related to ID theft, up from 40% in 2002. And Internet related fraud accounted for 55% of all fraud reports, up from 45% 2002.

Excluding ID theft complaints, the top category rankings are as follows:

In 2003, Kentucky had over 4,000 complaints filed from consumers related to fraud (2,986) and identity theft (1,332). The top fraud complaints were related to Internet auctions, shop-at-home/catalog sales, Internet services and computer complaints, foreign money offers and prizes/sweepstakes and lotteries. The top identity theft type complaints were related to credit cards, phone or utilities frand, bank fraud, government docuements or benefits fraud, loan frant, and attempted identity theft. The top cities targeted were Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, Owensboro and Paducah.

The Federal Trade Commission Website has an abundance of resources to protect yourself against fraud and identify theft. Visit their Website at: http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/. The FTC established the Identity Theft Toll-Free Hotline at 1-877-IDTHEFT (438-4338) and the ID Theft Website to give identity theft victims a central place in the federal government to report their problems and receive helpful information. Complaints received from victims of identity theft via the hotline or online complaint form are entered into the Data Clearinghouse.

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