The Internet can be a wonderful tool. In the wrong hands, it can also facilitate scams reaching across national boundaries: Pyramid schemes, advance-fee loan scams, bogus foreign lotteries or sweepstakes, and phony mail-order brides.

In my office days at the BBB, I received dozens of reports of such scams. While the BBB does record and share this information and provide options to callers, you also need to report scammers to the Federal Trade Commission.

When you file an FTC complaint, your data is entered into Consumer Sentinel, an online database available to over 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

Click the link below to see recent FTC statistics:

http://www.bbb.org/blog/2012/07/cross-border-fraud-how-bad-is-it/