You may have heard about some of these schemes. Many are just the same old telemarketing frauds with a new twist. Fortunately, the volume of complaints regarding these schemes has been much lower than expected. Let me first discuss the FBI's role in addressing consumer-related frauds. With all of the agencies and organizations at the state and federal level that are addressing telemarketing and other consumer frauds, things can be confusing.
Many telemarketing frauds involve the use of both telephones and the mail.
Because of this, we frequently work closely with the US Postal Inspection Service in telemarketing fraud investigations. Because of our limited resources and our focus on the major offenders, we are generally not the best agency to call first if you receive solicitation you think might be fraudulent. North Carolina has a very effective Consumer Protection office in Raleigh which takes thousands of calls each year, analyzes trends and reports summary information to the Consumer Sentinel database. They will make us aware of the most eggregious matters that need to be addressed at the federal criminal level. This is one form of telemarketing fraud that tries to exploit the Y2K situation.