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Romance scams make up more than 10 percent of all financial losses to online fraud — and women 50 and older account for 61 percent of those losses.

Fake Romeos are getting rich off women ages 50 and older, who are by far the biggest victims of online romance scams, federal authorities reported Tuesday in detailing an 8 percent rise in U.S. Internet crime last year.

Romance scams most often are operations in which the victim is sucked in by a fake profile on an online dating site and hands over cash or other gifts.

The most notorious recent incident involved Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, whose "girlfriend" and her heart-tugging death to leukemia turned out to be an online hoax. But it's much more common for older women to be victimized, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, a joint project of the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

More than 10 percent of all reported online financial losses last year — about $56 million out of $525 million overall — involved romance scams, the center reported in its 2012 crime roundup.

The IC3 report tabulated that 29 percent of those specifically targeted in such scams last year were women 50 and older:

Internet Crime Complaint Center

But they got taken for more than $34 million — 61 percent of all losses to such cons:

Internet Crime Complaint Center

By comparison, everybody else — younger women and all male victims — reported only $22 million in losses, according to the report.

"Middle-aged or older women are what I see being susceptible to another man who manipulates them for either money or sex," Justin D'Arienzo, a psychologist and dating coach in Jacksonville, Fla., told NBC station WTLV after a 60-year-old Jacksonville woman was victimized earlier this year.

Overall, losses to Internet crime rose by 8.3 percent in 2012, breaking the half-billion-dollar mark for the first time — further establishing that "criminals are increasingly migrating their fraudulent activities from the physical world to the Internet," said Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch.

In response, IC3 said in a statement that it has expanded its education programs to alert the Americans to online scams.

"As technology continues to advance, so will our efforts to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals," said Don Brackman, director of the National White Collar Crime Center.

The breadth of romance trolling is further illustrated by a startling statistic: Only one other type of online scam — auto fraud — made more money last year, accounting for $65 million in reported losses.

Men — who made up a slight 52 percent-to-49 percent majority of all online victims — were the target of choice for bad guys using cars as lures, accounting for 60 percent of such scams last year.

Historically, online auto fraud has involved scammers who try to sell cars they don't own. But the IC3 noted a new flimflam in 2012: criminals who "pose as dealers instead of individuals selling a single car."

"This allows them to advertise multiple vehicles for sale at one time on certain platforms, potentially exposing more victims to the scam," it said.

The figures in the report are likely to be significantly underreported; security experts have warned for years that computer crimes often aren't reported, either because the victim doesn't know whom to call or is too embarrassed to admit having been taken in. And the report almost exclusively tabulates complaints registered in the U.S., meaning it's not a good picture of the entire world of Internet fraud.

But it does provide an interesting snapshot of what the bad guys are doing and how.

Other schemes that accounted for statistically significant losses were:

• Real estate fraud — rental scams, fake time-share marketing, bogus loan modifications and the like — cost a reported $15.4 million.
• General intimidation or extortion — $10.6 million.
• Impersonation of an FBI agent to trick computers into revealing sensitive financial or personal data — $2.3 million.
• The tried and true "hit man" protection scheme, in which the victim is told that he or she has been targeted by a hit man, who'll call off the hit in return for a large sum of money — $1.2 million.

How to stay safe online

Security specialists offer these tips if you suspect you might be dealing with a scam artist:

• Be suspicious if your correspondent accepts only wire transfers or cash.
• If you're buying merchandise, make sure it's from a reputable source. Be wary, for example, of businesses that operate from post office boxes or mail drops.
• Never click on an unsolicited e-mail; instead, go directly to the organization's official website.
• Never give out your credit card number unless you're certain the site is secure and reputable.

The FBI offers an extensive list of warning signs and tips here.

You can file an online fraud complaint here.

Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

Related:

Read the entire IC3 2012 report (.pdf)

Red Tape Chronicles: Net users fall for fake online lovers all the time

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J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington on Tuesday.

In a major crackdown on healthcare fraud across the country, 89 people, including 14 doctors and nurses, were charged for their roles in various Medicare scams that bilked taxpayers of some $223 million through bogus charges, federal officials said Tuesday.

Some people allegedly posed as doctors and wrote bogus prescriptions for drugs and psychotherapy therapy and then billed the government $12 million.

Others are accused of bribing Medicare patients for their ID numbers, then using those numbers to bill $20 million in home health care never performed or not medically necessary.

The lead suspect in that case used the money to buy luxury cars, including two Lamborghinis and a Ferrari, officials said.

About 400 federal agents were involved in Tuesday's arrests, raiding businesses, seizing documents and charging suspects in Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Tampa, Fla., and Baton Rouge, La.

The dragnet was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the latest in a series of busts over the past four years to crack down on fraud that is believed to annually cost Medicare billions of  dollars.

In all the schemes, profit was a driving force, officials said.

“Today's takedown is the latest sign we are beginning to turn the tide on Medicare fraud,” Sebelius said in a news conference.

Holder said during the four-year crackdown by a federal strike force that 1,500 people have been arrested in connection to schemes involving nearly $2 billion in fraudulent billings.

He claimed that $8 dollars are returned to the U.S. Treasury for every dollar spent on the investigations.

Still, he said the battle against health care fraud is being affected by the across-the-board budget cuts called sequestration, which have trimmed $1.6 billion in funding from the Justice Department in the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

"Unless Congress adopts a balanced deficit reduction plan and stops the reductions currently slated for 2014, I fear our capacity to protect the American people from healthcare fraud ... will be further reduced," Holder said.

Sebelius said the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, gives the government more tools to combat fraud.

“By expanding our authority to suspend Medicare payments and reimbursements when fraud is suspected, the law allows us to better preserve the system and save taxpayer dollars.” Sebelius said. “Today we’re sending a strong, clear message to anyone seeking to defraud Medicare: You will get caught and you will pay the price. We will protect a sacred trust and an earned guarantee.”

In Miami, where 25 people were charged for their role in various fraudulent schemes totaling $44 million, federal officials allege that in one scheme three suspects bribed Medicare patients for their identification numbers, then used the information to bill the government $20 million for medically unnecessary home health care services.

“The lead defendant spent much of the money from the scheme and purchased multiple luxury vehicles including two Lamborhinis, a Ferrari and a Bentley,” according to a statement from Health and Human Services and the Justice Department.

In Detroit, 18 people, including two doctors, a physician's assistant and two therapists, were charged in various scams totaling some $49 million in false claims for medically unnecessary services, including home health, psychotherapy and infusion therapy.

In one Detroit case, three people allegedly posed as licensed physicians and wrote bogus prescriptions for drugs and psychotherapy services totaling $12 million, according to the HHS-DOJ statement. 

Tuesday’s announcement on the Medicare-fraud sweep was overshadowed by reporters inquiring about two other scandals involving Holder’s Justice Department: That the attorney general’s office seized Associated Press phone records in a probe of a national security leak and a DOJ probe into reports that the IRS gave extra scrutiny to some conservative groups when auditing nonprofit organizations.

Pool / Reuters

Jodi Arias listens during closing arguments in her murder trial Friday, May 3.

Jodi Arias is off suicide watch after an evaluation established that she wasn't a threat to herself — even though she said she hoped a Phoenix jury would sentence her to death for killing her former boyfriend — authorities said Monday.

Arias, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder last week for killing Travis Alexander in 2008. In an interview afterward with KSAZ-TV of Phoenix, she said she would "rather get death than life" and that death was the "ultimate freedom."

Maricopa County sheriff's officials said Monday that Arias had been transferred back to the inmate population at the county's Estrella Jail for women after having been observed on suicide watch for five days in a psychiatric ward, The Arizona Republic reported.

The jury that convicted Arias is scheduled to reconvene on Wednesday to determine whether she should face death or life in prison. 

That phase of the trial was supposed to have started last Thursday, but it was postponed without an official explanation. Sheriff's deputies also arrested an 18-year-old man that day and charged him with threatening to bomb the courthouse where Arias was tried.

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Carlos Osorio/AP file

The man was flying into Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus, Mich., according to a criminal complaint filed Monday, May 13.

A man traveling with an altered Saudi Arabian passport was in federal court Monday after a pressure cooker was discovered in his luggage at the Detroit airport over the weekend.

The man, identified in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court as Hussain Al Kwawahir, made his initial court appearance Monday on charges of altering a passport and lying to customs officials.

Two pressure cooker bombs were used in the attacks that killed three people and injured more than 250 others last month at the Boston Marathon.

Al Kwawahir, 33, wasn't charged with any terrorism-related offenses, however, and U.S. officials told NBC News they were handling the incident as simply a documents case.

The incident occurred Saturday at Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus, Mich., authorities said. When customs officials noticed that a page had been removed from Al Kwawahir's passport, they examined his luggage and found the pressure cooker, the complaint said.

Al Kwawahir, who was flying into Detroit from Amsterdam, told agents he didn't know how or why the page had been removed.

Al Kwawahir first explained the pressure cooker by saying he'd bought it as a gift for his nephew, who he said was a student at the University of Toledo in Ohio, believing they weren't sold in the U.S. He then changed his story, saying his nephew had managed to buy a pressure cooker in the U.S. but that it had broken.

The complaint didn't explain why the nephew needed someone to fly into the country with a pressure cooker, but the U.S. officials told NBC News that federal agents tracked him down and said he does, indeed, cook with one. 

The Associated Press quoted the young man, Nasser Almarzooq, as saying he'd asked his uncle to bring him the pressure cooker because he wanted to cook lamb and the cookers he bought in the U.S. didn't work.

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Pete Williams of NBC News contributed to this report.

KCRA

The 12-year-old brother of Leila Fowler, shown in a screen grab from video, was arrested Saturday on murder charges in her death.

The 12-year-old brother of a California girl found stabbed to death in their home last month was arrested Saturday, authorities said.

Calaveras County Sheriff Gary Kuntz told reporters that Leila Fowler's brother, who had said that an intruder killed her, was taken into custody after a two-week investigation. Kuntz said the boy would be charged with homicide, NBC station KCRA of Sacramento reported.

The 8-year-old girl and her brother were home alone on the afternoon of April 27 at their Valley Springs home when she was killed, KCRA reported, citing school district superintendent Mark Campbell, who met with the parents. The parents were at a Little League game in the small town at the time of the attack, Campbell said.

Officials said at first that Fowler's brother told them he had found her body and described her killer as a tall man with long gray hair. The county coroner told KCRA that Fowler died of shock and hemorrhaging caused by multiple stab wounds.

Authorities searched the home and neighborhood, while dive teams searched two reservoirs near the house. A neighbor who told authorities a man ran from the home was discredited, KCRA reported. Investigators have said there was no sign of a burglary or robbery.

Her death and her brother's account of a murderous intruder put the town of about 7,400 on edge. 

"Nobody is staying alone," parent James Barci told KCRA in April.

Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Teacher Cecilia Richardson helps a student tie a ribbon honoring third-grader Leila Fowler, at Jenny Lind Elementary School in Valley Springs, Calif., on April 29.

Related:

'We will not rest': Sheriff hunts California girl's killer

Town grows nervous as girl's killer is hunted

Reuters file

A school bus takes Sandy Hook Elementary School pupils home from a temporary school Thursday, Jan. 3, the day they returned to classes after the killings of 20 classmates in December.

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in December, should be torn down and replaced with an entirely new school, the task force charged with determining its future decided Friday night.

The 28 members of the Sandy Hook Elementary Building Task Force, voting unanimously, rejected alternatives under which the current school would have been be renovated or a new school would have been built at a new location, NBC Connecticut of Hartford reported. Voters must approve the plan before it can go into effect.

Three weeks after the Dec. 14 shooting, pupils returned to classes at a former middle school seven miles from Sandy Hook. Relatives of victims of the shootings and other parents had been vehemently opposed to renovating and reopening the existing school.

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"I will chain my body to it and to protest if they try to reopen it," said Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Hochsprung, the school's principal, who was among those killed, told NBC Connecticut after no decision was made at a meeting last week.

"It should be knocked down," Lafferty said. "There should be some type of long-lasting memorial. I don't want people to walk into the building and say, 'Oh well, that's where Erica's mom got gunned down.' That's not OK."

Officials have estimated the cost of renovating the current facility or building a new school at $47 million to $59 million.

"Just tearing it down and building a new school in the same place is one of the solutions that would make the most sense," said Peter Caracciolo, the father of a Sandy Hook pupil.

Daniel Krauss, whose daughter is a second-grader, told The Associated Press he was pleased by the panel's recommendation.

"It's been a place for learning, for kids to grow up and it's going to go back to that," he said.

Related:

Emotions run high in debate over future of Sandy Hook school

Sacramento County Sheriff's Department via KCRA

Authorities say Etta Mae Lopez slapped a Sacramento County, Calif., sheriff's deputy Tuesday, May 7, to kick her habit in a smoke-free environment — jail.

A woman who slapped a California sheriff's deputy this week in a deliberate attempt to be thrown in jail so she could stop smoking got her wish when a judge sentenced her to 63 days for battery.

The woman, Etta Me Lopez, 31, of Sacramento, waited outside the Sacramento County jail for several hours Tuesday for the first deputy to come along, Sgt. Jason Ramos told NBC station KCRA of Sacramento. When Deputy Matt Campoy happened to wander by, Lopez — who jail records list as just 5 feet, 1 inch tall — suddenly slapped him and, when he tried to restrain her, hit Campoy in the arm, Ramos said.

Lopez pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of battery against a peace officer and was sentenced to 63 days in jail, records showed Friday.

Campoy told The Sacramento Bee that Lopez said "she knew that the only way to quit smoking was to go to jail because they don't allow tobacco in the jail."

"I've been telling everybody that I have a new Irish name: Nick O'Derm," Campoy told the newspaper.

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