The role of the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in cyber crime is to give victims a way to report suspected illegal activity involving Internet Web sites, chat rooms, and e-mail. IC3 is a central referral mechanism for law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the federal, state, local and international levels.

The IC3 has identified ongoing Internet trends and schemes that constitute cyber crime including, but not limited to, auction fraud, credit card fraud, debt elimination, business opportunities, identity theft, investment fraud, phishing/spoofing, and spam.

Once a complaint has been filed, IC3 evaluates it and refers it to the appropriate federal, state, local, or international law enforcement or regulatory agency with jurisdiction over the matter.

The benefit of the IC3 is that it can take one person's crime complaint that may be valued at $100 and combine it with hundreds or thousands of other victims with the same crime complaint. While most law enforcement agencies do not investigate cases that represent small amounts of money, the IC3 can build a case with the accumulated complaints and make it significant enough for law enforcement agencies to pursue.

The IC3 partners with the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and has other alliances to make Internet e-commerce safer for consumers. These industry partners include: the Business Software Alliance, the Direct Marketing Association, eBay and PayPal, the Federal Trade Commission, the Financial Services Industry, the Merchant Risk Council, Microsoft, the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Reporting Economic Crime Online, and the United States Postal Inspection Service.

The IC3 continues to fill its role as a defender of cyber crime victims as it gets smarter about cyber crime and how to fight it more effectively.

References:
http://www.ic3.gov
http://usinfo.state.gov

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