Fraud
[1] The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, such as obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's license.
This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that some jurisdictions require the victim to prove fraud by clear and convincing evidence.
The remedies for fraud may include rescission (i.e., reversal) of a fraudulently obtained agreement or transaction, the recovery of a monetary award to compensate for the harm caused, punitive damages to punish or deter the misconduct, and possibly others.
The "theft" of one's personal information or identity, like finding another's social security number and then using it as identification, is a type of fraud.
Given the international nature of the web and the ease with which users can hide their location, obstacles to checking identity and legitimacy online, and the variety of hacker techniques available to gain access to PII have all contributed to the very rapid growth of Internet fraud.
[10] A hoax is a distinct concept that involves deliberate deception without the intention of gain or of materially damaging or depriving a victim.
Using computer-based analytic methods in particular allows for the surfacing of errors, anomalies, inefficiencies, irregularities, and biases which often refer to fraudsters gravitating to certain dollar amounts to get past internal control thresholds.
The article said that the accountancy firm BDO examined reported fraud cases worth more than £50,000 and found that the total number rose to 577 in 2017, compared with 212 in 2003.
[citation needed] The estimate for fraud in the UK figure is more than the entire GDP of countries such as Romania, Qatar and Hungary.
This figure would be a conservative estimate, since as the former commissioner of the City of London Police, Adrian Leppard, has said, only 1 in 12 such crimes are actually reported.
[24] Donald Toon, director of the NCA's economic crime command, stated in July 2016: "The annual losses to the UK from fraud are estimated to be more than £190bn".
These figures are separate from the headline estimate that another 6.3 million crimes (distinct from fraud) were perpetrated in the UK against adults in the year to March 2016.
Michael Levi, professor of criminology at Cardiff University, remarked in August 2016 that it was "deeply regrettable" that fraud was being left out of the first index despite being the most common crime reported to police in the UK.
"[citation needed] The Chief of the National Audit Office (NAO), Sir Anyas Morse has also said "For too long, as a low-value but high-volume crime, online fraud has been overlooked by government, law enforcement and industry.
[34] Deprivation of confidential information, in the nature of a trade secret or copyrighted material that has commercial value, has also been held to fall within the scope of the offence.
[37] The scale of the problem pointed to the need for a small but high-powered body to bring together the numerous counter-fraud initiatives that existed.
[42] Beyond legislation directed at preventing or punishing fraud, some governmental and non-governmental organizations engage in anti-fraud efforts.
[43] These laws were enacted and enforced at the state level and regulated the offering and sale of securities to protect the public from fraud.
To increase public trust in the capital markets, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
[46] Rate of fraud per capita for individual countries as reported by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is shown below for the last available year.
Apart from fraud, there are several related categories of intentional deceptions that may or may not include the elements of personal gain or damage to another individual:
