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Not a victimless crime: The impact of fraud on individual victims and their families

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Abstract

This article uses data from the largest study of fraud victims in England Wales to date to explore the impact of fraud on victims. Thirty face-to-face interviews and nearly 800 telephone interviews were conducted with fraud victims and family members. Basic demographic data on the profile of victims is provided and compared with victims of other crimes. More comprehensive data are also given relating to the impact of fraud, highlighting financial hardship, broken relationships, psychological effects, mental and physical health problems. The article also highlights secondary impacts, such as damage to reputation and celebrity as well as both positive and negative changes in behaviour. The wide variation in the impact of fraud on victims is highlighted: with some victims reporting little or no impact of fraud whereas others clearly suffer devastating impacts. This destroys the myth of fraud being almost entirely a victimless crime or a crime of lesser impact.

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Notes

  1. Investment Fraud includes Ponzi Schemes, which are a type of pyramid selling scheme where money from new investors is used to provide a return to previous investors. Eventually, the scheme collapses as fewer new investors are attracted.

  2. Share scams run from ‘Boiler rooms’ where fraudsters cold-call investors offering them worthless, overpriced or even non-existent shares, promising high returns. Boiler rooms access publicly available share registers and use increasingly sophisticated means to approach investors offering to buy or sell shares. However, those who invest usually end up by losing their money.

  3. Identity fraud comes in two forms: the misappropriation of the identity (such as the name, date of birth, address) of another person, without his or her knowledge or consent to obtain goods and services in that person's name: and the use of a misappropriated identity (via a stolen passport or driving licence) in criminal activity, to obtain goods or services by deception.

  4. These are victims who for a variety of reasons fall into a pattern of repeated falling for the same or similar frauds. Some elderly victims developing dementia who fall for a lottery scam when repeatedly targeted again continue to send money to the perpetrators.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dean Blackburn and the company Accent for their contributions to this research.

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Correspondence to Mark Button.

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Button, M., Lewis, C. & Tapley, J. Not a victimless crime: The impact of fraud on individual victims and their families. Secur J 27, 36–54 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2012.11

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