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Online frauds: Learning from victims why they fall for these scams

Button, Mark ; Nicholls, Carol McNaughton ; Kerr, Jane ; Owen, Rachael (2014) — Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology

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DOI: 10.1177/0004865814521224 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   Australia
Tags:   England And Wales, Mass Marketing Fraud, Online Fraud, Romance Scams, Scammer Tactics, Social Engineering, Victim Experiences
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Synopsis

            
Three-phase qualitative study: an evidence review; face-to-face, audio-recorded and verbatim-transcribed interviews with nine fraud-prevention stakeholders; and primary victim research conducted July-October 2012. Victim research comprised six two-hour focus groups (48 people) and 15 depth interviews, including people affected by sensitive, extensive, or potentially vulnerability-related frauds. The internet makes traditional scamming techniques cheaper, easier to apply at scale, and more frequent. Grooming can begin with small requests and escalate to larger sums; perpetrators may send gifts to facilitate the process. Victim accounts may be incomplete because participants may not know how the fraud occurred or may conceal reasons through embarrassment.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies limited victim-focused research on mass-marketing and online fraud, especially research based on contact with actual victims. It notes that existing romance-scam research covers only one online-fraud type, leaving a gap on the broad variety of online frauds, their victims, and why they succumb. It also identifies weak, non-nuanced prevalence data: surveys rarely capture online-fraud experiences, actual victimisation, or internationally agreed fraud categories.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Three-phase qualitative study: an evidence review; face-to-face, audio-recorded and verbatim-transcribed interviews with nine fraud-prevention stakeholders; and primary victim research conducted July–October 2012. Victim research comprised six two-hour focus groups (48 people) and 15 depth interviews, including people affected by sensitive, extensive, or potentially vulnerability-related frauds. Sampling monitored diversity in gender, age, household, employment, health, internet use, and financial confidence. Analysis explored fraud commission, impacts, seriousness, and offender culpability.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
Victim accounts may be incomplete because participants may not know how the fraud occurred or may conceal reasons through embarrassment. Some participants could explain only elements, rather than the whole mechanism, of complex fraud. The qualitative sample was limited to 63 victims in England and Wales and focused on frauds completed wholly or partly online; findings therefore do not establish prevalence or causal susceptibility patterns. The study explicitly did not examine psychological traits associated with victimisation.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Conduct regular, nuanced population surveys of fraud victimisation to track fraud types, offender modus operandi, victim characteristics, needs, and reasons for victimisation. Undertake further in-depth research on common scam types. Investigate psychological traits associated with susceptibility across the wider range of scams.

          

              

    
    

        
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