Frauds is a 1993 Australian thriller comedy[1] film starring Phil Collins, Hugo Weaving and Josephine Byrnes.

The film focuses on Roland Copping (Collins), a sociopathic insurance investigator who blackmails a married couple (Weaving and Byrnes) about the accidental killing of their friend during a prank gone wrong.

[2] The film opens with a boy named Roland Copping celebrating his 8th birthday, where his mother gives him a pair of dice that belonged to his father.

Jonathan Wheats and his wife, Beth, a kindergarten teacher, host a party involving their friends Margaret and Michael.

When Jonathan asks what relevance they hold to the case, Roland flips the dice to decide whether he should continue the conversation tonight or do it tomorrow.

Horrified, Jonathan runs into the shed in the backyard and rips through the hiding spot: a model of the Battle of Austerlitz, only to find the fork is not there.

Jonathan confesses that he stole the cutlery because Beth spent half of her life surrounded by bills she could not afford.

Instead of telling the police about the fraud, Roland decides to pull childish pranks on them, including taking the set of cutlery, sending an insurance agent to inspect their car, mailing the crossbow used to kill Michael, and decorating a Christmas tree inside their house with the stolen cutlery and the words "steal me"; this causes Beth to vomit all over the police detective who arrived at her house to investigate.

Meanwhile, Jonathan locates Roland's house and goes inside, accidentally activating a secret passage that takes him into a funhouse-style hideout.

Stephan Elliot wanted to use Phil Collins after seeing him in an episode of Miami Vice and contacted him through Finlay's husband, Al Clark, who used to work for Virgin Films, and was supported and financed through J&M executive Michael Ryan.

It features Guy Gross's score for the film, performed by the Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra orchestrated and conducted by Derek Williams.

[7] Frauds was initially criticised for being "self-impressed by its own garishness" in the Los Angeles Times[1] and for being "dramatically thin" in TV Guide.

[8] In a 2-and-a-half-star review, Rob Lowing of The Sun-Herald wrote, "This has all the colour and visual wit of a Tim Burton (Beetlejuice) comedy, but it's definitely light in the plot department.