Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: FTC Releases Survey of Consumer Fraud , (Apr 22, 2013)

On Friday, the FTC released a survey of fraud in the United States during 2011, which showed that an estimated 25.6 million adults—10.8 percent of the adult population—were fraud victims. There were an estimated total of 37.8 million incidents of these frauds during 2011.

This is the agency’s third fraud survey. It was conducted in late 2011 and early 2012. As in the two earlier FTC fraud surveys, consumers were asked questions designed to learn whether they had been victims of certain types of fraudulent transactions. In selecting the frauds to include in the survey, an attempt was made to be as consistent as possible with the previous surveys. However, two new areas—mortgage relief fraud and grant fraud—were added to the 2011 survey.

A significant number of consumers fell victim to fraud related to the marketing of weight-loss products (an estimated 5.1 million) and prize-promotion schemes (an estimated 2.4 million), according to the survey. Unauthorized billing for buyers’ club memberships and Internet services, work-at-home programs, credit repair scams, debt relief, credit card offers, business opportunities, and mortgage relief scams rounded out the top 10 categories of fraud.

News: ConsumerProtection FederalTradeCommissionNews