Identity theft continues to top the FTC’s national ranking of consumer complaints, with American consumers reported as losing over $1.6 billion to overall fraud in 2013, according to its annual report released last month. The FTC received more than two million complaints overall, of which 290,056 or 14%, involved identity theft. Thirty percent of these were tax or wage-related, which continues to be the largest category within identity theft complaints. Debt collection followed identity theft with 204,644 or 10% of total complaints, and banking and lending was number three with 152,707 or 7%.
Florida was noted as the state with the highest per capita rate of reported identity theft and fraud complaints, followed by Georgia and California for identity theft complaints, and Nevada and Georgia for fraud and other complaints.