More complaints were filed by consumers for identity theft than any other type of fraud last year as the number of complaints in the category grew 5 percent. One good sign is that the share of complaints about real estate fraud is diminishing.
U.S. consumers filed 38,140 complaints against mortgage foreclosure relief and debt management firms in 2011. While such complaints accounted for 2 percent of all complaints, the category wasn’t even among the 10-worst.
The statistics were disclosed in the 2011 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book released Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission. The network, launched in 1997, is an online database of consumer complaints that is only available to law enforcement. More than 7 million complaints have been logged by the network since 2007.
E-mail was the method used to contact consumers in 43 percent of all cases.
With 279,156 complaints registered last year, identity theft accounted for 15 percent of all complaints — making it the worst category. The number of identity theft complaints increased around 5 percent between 2010 and last year.
Florida had the highest per-capita rate in the category of identity theft.
In the No. 5 spot were complaints against banks and lenders. With 89,341 complaints logged for the category, it represented 5 percent of all FTC complaints in 2011.
“Mortgage foreclosure relief and debt management” managed to come in at No. 13.
Less than 1 percent of last year’s complaints were in the No. 25 category of “real estate.”
Just 0.8 percent of complaints were tied to real estate fraud, an improvement from 1.0 percent in 2010. In calendar-year 2009, real estate fraud complaints accounted for 1.1 percent of all complaints.
