From...

October 5, 1999
Web posted at: 11:33 a.m. EDT (1533 GMT)

by Keith Perine

(IDG) -- In the battle against fraud on the Internet, the Federal Trade Commission has decided that to beat the Web scam artists, it has to join them.

Visitors to a Web site for a product called NordiCalLite can learn all about the "Scandinavian weight breakthrough" that will let them shed pounds like raindrops by taking a single pill every day. Surfers that come across a site belonging to the outfit NetOpportunitie$ can discover "a unique consulting business opportunity" that will earn you thousands of dollars after just one seminar. But if you go too deep into either Web site, up comes an FTC page saying that you're gullible enough to be conned by an Internet scam.

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The commission's "teaser pages" are the brainchild of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, a federal fraud watchdog. The bureau's 300 lawyers and investigators sift through tens of thousands of complaints every year as they try to ride herd on the detritus of the Internet Economy – the shifty and unscrupulous swindlers who hide in plain sight in cyberspace, ready to bilk any and all comers.

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For Jodie Bernstein, who's been the consumer protection bureau's director since 1995, Internet fraud is just a new twist on an old story she's seen since the 1970s, with one key difference.

"It's so much easier and cheaper for anyone to get into business on the Internet," Bernstein says. "And the rip-offs happen fast, so we have to move fast."

At a press conference at the FTC's headquarters last week, Bernstein announced the commission's 100th Internet fraud case. The honor went to a group of Australian and Portuguese businessmen who the FTC says rode the Web like highwaymen, "pagejacking" 25 million reputable Web sites and routing their viewers to X-rated images so seamy that the commission's staff couldn't bear to let reporters see them during a demonstration.

The commission marked the centenary milestone by unveiling its $80,000 Internet crime lab, a nondescript second-floor room with about a dozen PCs. Because Web pages can be put up and taken down faster than a snake-oil salesman's clapboard wagon, the lab captures the pages it investigates and stores them on its own hard drive. When it suspects lawbreaking, the commission can move against suspects in both civil and criminal courts or through its own administrative law judges.

Bernstein clearly enjoys rapping the knuckles of the legion of liars and cheats that dwell on the Web. "I love it, she says. "They couldn't force me out of here."