Regulating Fraud Revisited

Abstract

Many frauds (and other financial crimes such as money-laundering) are partly or wholly invisible to outsiders, being planned and executed in private and/or, even where the harms themselves are evident, being hard to attribute to the criminal fault of individuals, especially when committed in an organisational context. Many frauds — such as payment- card, some ‘advance fee’ frauds, ‘boiler room’ stock scams and ‘identity crimes’ — become visible after a while, though victims may prefer to believe that they are not victims of fraud. Others, such as price-fixing cartels and the manipulation by banks of LIBOR or Foreign Exchange rates, maybe wholly invisible to the public unless a whistleblower comes forward or some other event brings it to the notice of the authorities. Changes in legislation — for example the Fraud Act 2006 — have reduced the ambiguity of fraud allegations.