Mercantile Morality
One in Six Americans Victim of Fraud, FTC Says
Thu Aug 5, 2004 08:29 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One in six U.S. adults was victimized by fraud over the course of a year, from long-distance phone service switched without their permission to magazine subscriptions that never arrive, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.
Some 25 million Americans paid for loans that never came through, signed up for illegal "credit repair" services that didn't improve their credit scores, or otherwise lost money in fraudulent scams, the FTC reported.
Another 14 million had their long-distance phone service switched without their permission, a practice known as "slamming," the FTC said in its first-ever survey of consumer fraud.
The survey of 2,500 consumers was taken late May and early June of 2003. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. An FTC statistician said the time since the survey was taken was spent analyzing the results and compiling the report.
