Mass-Marketing Fraud A Threat Assessment

Mass-marketing fraud is a term increasingly used around the world to refer to fraud schemes that use mass-communications media - including telephones, the Internet, mass mailings, television, radio, and even personal contact - to contact, solicit, and obtain money, funds, or other items of value from multiple victims in one or more jurisdictions. Although law enforcement and regulatory authorities often use a variety of names to refer to the phenomenon - including "advance-fee fraud," "419 fraud," "Internet fraud," and "telemarketing fraud" - the growing profusion of labels for these fraud schemes tends to obscure the fact that such schemes often are conducted using multiple communications channels to identify and contact victims, as well as identical or highly similar methods of operation that are not dependent on a single communications medium.