According to analysts at the Federal Trade Commission, Utah ranks 36th among all 50 states in incidents of fraud and other scams with more than 26,000 crimes reported in 2021 (Image courtesy of Facebook).
LOGAN – Judging from the persistence of warnings from local police and officials about scams and identify theft, you’d think that Utah was the cyber-crime capitol of the world.
Not so, according to the experts at www.sprinto.com , a security consulting website.
Utah isn’t even in the top 10 of states most at risk for cyber-crime, which include South Dakota, Alabama, New York, Delaware, Massachusetts, Georgia, Vermont, New Jersey, California and Kansas.
The researchers at sprinto contend that personal data breach is among the leading types of cyber-crime in most states, followed by non-payment/non-delivery, extortion and social media fraud.
In South Dakota, for example, which sprinto experts rank as the most at-risk state, the average business loss per complaint from all forms of cyber-crime is nearly $60,000.
The Federal Trade Commission says that frauds of all types have been increasing every year in the United States.
FTC analysts, who contribute data to that agency’s Consumer Sentinel Network book each year, observe that reports of fraud rose from 4.8 million in 2020 to 5.7 million in 2021, a more than 18 percent increase.
The FTC ranks Utah 36th among the 50 states for reports of fraud and other crimes, with a relatively modest – but still unfortunate — number of slightly more than 26,000 incidents reported in 2021, or 823 reports per capita.
Compare that to Georgia, which the FTC ranks as the state with more than 150,000 incidents of fraud and other crimes reported and a per capita rate of more than 1,400.
Nationwide, the FTC received 2.8 million reports of fraud incidents, 1.4 million reports of identify theft and 1.5 million reports of other cyber-crimes in 2021, for a total loss of $5.9 billion.
In Utah, identify theft incidents were reported more than 6,000 times in 2021, for a per capita rate of nearly 190.
Fraud reports included nearly a million incidents of imposter scams throughout the U.S.
Typical imposter scams are bogus romantic relationships; people falsely claiming to be government officials; a relative in distress; a well-known business; or a technical support expert.
In most cases, the FTC reported that people being targeted by scam-artists were contacted by telephone.
Bank transfers and credit card payments accounted for the highest aggregate losses reported in 2021, for a total of $756 million. Bogus investments in crypto-currency were almost as costly, totaling losses of $750 million.
Contrary to widespread belief, FTC analysts said that younger people reported losing money to fraud more often than older people.
In 2021, for example, 41 percent of fraud victims reported their age as being between 20 and 29, compared to 18 percent of victims 70 to 79 years of age.
But the FTC confirmed that when people over the age of 70 are victimized by scammers, their median loss was much higher than any other age group.
The FTC is the central repository of reports from consumers about problems they experience in the marketplace.
Those reports are stored in the Consumer Sentinel Network data book, a secure online database available to law enforcement.
Since 1997, the Sentinel database has collected tens of millions of consumer reports about fraud, identify theft and other consumer protection topics.
Sprinto.com is a commercial online service that promotes security compliance, healthy business operations and a commitment to good security practices.