Scientific Journal of the National Academy of Internal Affairs

The urgency of the scientific article. Identifying the criminal in the virtual world is an extremely problematic process. The number of cybercrimes in Ukraine is increasing by several thousand every year. The most common crime is committing frauds in the Internet. Cyber swindlers enhance their professionalism by refining ways to commit and conceal crimes. Most often, scammers create websites and sell non-existent goods. A significant number of crimes are related to the extraction of the information from the bank cards, mobile phones, and computers. Internet scammers launch ransom ware’s computer viruses, blackmail companies, and organize frauds with crypto currency. And this is not a complete list of the crimes they commit. The success of preventing such crimes, exposing them and bringing those, who is responsible, to justice is a rare occurrence, if you compare it to the number of such offenses. Socio-psychological characteristics of the behavior of the person who commits fraud on the Internet, will allow to improve the methods of the investigation and to detect such manifestations in advance. The purpose of this article is generalization of the socio-psychological characteristics of the person committing fraud on the Internet. This characteristic makes it possible to establish a socio-psychological portrait of the offender in accordance with the type of committed online fraud, which will in crease the effectiveness of investigating such crimes. Methodology sof this science article are coherent and consistent system of methods that made it possible to properly analyze the subject of the study. In particular, there were used scientific methods of analysis, induction and deduction. Summarizing the above, it should be conclusions that there is a certain set of personality traits that determine the choice of a particular criminal activity that the fraudster is about to commit. Established and generalized socio-psychological characteristics of the Internet fraudster will allow to make a socio-psychological portrait in accordance with the committed Internet fraud, to determine the effective ways of exposing it, to optimize the process of identifying the circle of persons among whom it would be worth to search the offender, and to identify the appropriate offender. The revealed socio-psychological features of the Internet fraudster's portrait form the basis for the investigation of the crime and the organization of counteraction and prevention of frauds committed through the Internet