FTC tracks spammers and fraudsters

Computerworld - A note to all spammers and Internet fraudsters: The Federal Trade Commission has amassed a 300,000-case database, code-named Sentinel, full of information about your scamming ways. And Sentinel is a browser click away from every law enforcement agency in the country, as well as some in Canada and Australia.

The FTC has recently gone live with part of this database and named it ConsumerSentinel. While it gives no information about live investigations, ConsumerSentinal does take in information from those who have been victimized by alleged Internet abusers. All anyone needs to do to report a potential abuser is to click the site's complaint button. (Names, addresses and phone numbers are also greatly appreciated, says the FTC.)

In return, the site offers consumers easy-to-find online information on the top cyberscams. Some titles from its vast library: "How to avoid losing money to investments frauds" and "Phones, pagers and e-mail may trigger costly scams."

Four days after its launch, the site got more than 20,000 hits, according to Bob Kuykendall, manager of the FTC's ConsumerSentinel database.

The key for crime fighters is that consumer complaints feed into the law enforcement Sentinel, giving them real-time information that can be matched against existing cases.

"This database is the crime-fighting tool of the century," said Kuykendall, who was recruited a year ago from his position as a U.S. postal inspector to manage the database. "A consumer can lodge a complaint at 8 a.m., and by that evening, that complaint could already be under investigation."

Without such a centralized repository, complaints usually get lost in the maze of city, county/regional, state or federal agencies to which they're reported, Kuykendall said. Now, law enforcement agents can build better cases with a global look at scamming, spamming and other illegal Internet activities.

Better cases mean more lawsuits and convictions, like the $30 million suit filed by the FTC against Dublin-based Verity International Inc. in December (not to be confused with the business portal vendor Verity Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif.). The FTC maintains that Verity International siphoned long-distance charges off Web surfers by transitioning their connection to a long-distance service to Madagascar and London. That long distance sucked up $3 to $7 per minute and showed up later on consumers' long-distance bills.

With stories like these posted all over the FTC's ConsumerSentinel page, Kuykendall seems to have infused his fight with a zeal that borders on the religious. And he isn't alone.

Chris Brandon, CEO and founder of Brandon Internet Services, is going after the same type of spammers