Internet swindlers grow more sophisticated

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For Sacramento grandmother Pat Blucher, it was a financial plea she couldn't resist. A few weeks ago, her distraught granddaughter called from Canada, saying she'd been arrested on drug charges and needed bail money. Immediately.

Only it wasn't her granddaughter, but someone setting a financial trap. It's an old scam but with a newer twist: Facebook. Using details apparently pulled from Facebook pages, the scam artist peppered the conversation with enough family facts — husband's and baby's names, a girlfriend's wedding — to persuade Blucher to wire $4,600 to Canada.

"They're so clever. They had all the information to fool me," said Blucher, a retired elementary school teacher who's convinced her Facebook page gave the caller access to too many personal details about her family.

The incident is yet another example of a classic cybercrime — using the Internet to foist financial fraud on unwitting victims.

From the "I Love You" computer worm in 2000 to last year's "stranded traveler" swindles, online scams have been around since the Internet's dawn. But they have become increasingly sophisticated — and lucrative — for cybercrooks.

Last year, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is affiliated with the FBI, logged its 2 millionth consumer complaint, a number that's doubled in about three years. From 2000 through 2009, total financial losses due to Internet crimes were roughly $1.7 billion, according to the IC3, with a median dollar loss of more than $500 per complaint.

A new study, "A Good Decade for Cybercrime," released in January by software company McAfee Labs, details how Internet crime has morphed from merely malicious to financially devastating.

Back in 2000, Internet fraud was relatively benign: Hackers sought bragging rights by cracking codes and worming their way into government and business computer networks in order to cause mischief. But by 2003, the motive had turned to money.

"Since then it's almost exclusively about finances," such as stealing bank account information or conning people into wiring funds, said Dave Marcus, security research director for McAfee Labs.

And the millions of users hanging out online via social networking accounts are increasingly vulnerable, he said. "Because of the sheer volume of people on Twitter and Facebook, it's a very fertile target group."