Losses from cybercrime and online scams more than doubled last year to $559 million as internet criminals used more sophisticated techniques, an FBI-led task force said.

The report from the Internet Crime Comp-laint Center (IC3), said losses in the US linked to online fraud shot up 110 per cent from $265 million in 2008, when losses were up just 11 per cent.

“The figures contained in this report indicate that criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the internet,” said Donald Brackman, director of the National White Collar Crime Centre, which runs the IC3 with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers. Internet crime is evolving in ways we couldn’t have imagined just five years ago.”

Of those complaints reporting monetary loss that were referred to law enforcement, the average loss was $5,580. This reflects a small number of cases in which hundreds of thousands of dollars were reported to have been lost by the complainant.

A familiar scam that has resurfaced offers free astrological readings to persons who provide their birth date and birth location.

This scheme and others such as phony anti-virus software are often tied to identity theft, which is one of the biggest categories, accounting for 14 per cent of losses.

Non-delivery of items bought on the internet was the biggest source of fraud, accounting for 19 per cent of losses, and credit card and auction fraud each accounted for ten per cent.

Advance fee fraud - which includes the so-called Nigerian bank scheme in which a person is asked to wire funds to receive a large sum of money - remained a major problem, representing 9.8 per cent of complaints.

Overall complaints to the centre rose 22 per cent to 336,655 in 2009.