Internet Crime Complaint Center



The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning suspected Internet-facilitated criminal activity. The IC3 gives victims a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations on the Internet. The IC3 develops leads and notifies law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, local and international level. Information sent to the IC3 is analyzed and disseminated for investigative and intelligence purposes to law enforcement and for public awareness.

History
The IC3 was founded in 2000 as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), and was tasked with gathering data on crimes committed online such as fraud, scams, and thefts. Other crimes tracked by the center included intellectual property rights matters, computer intrusions, economic espionage, online extortion, international money laundering, identity theft, and other Internet-facilitated crimes.

With the realization that crimes facilitated online have a chance to overlap with other crimes, and that not all crimes committed or facilitated online are just fraud, the IFCC was renamed to the Internet Crime Complaint Center in October 2003 to better reflect the broad character of such matters, and to minimize the need for one to distinguish online fraud from other potentially overlapping cyber crimes.