Fraud is costing the world billions.

Fraud is a global concern. Countries are dealing not only with domestic fraudsters but also with international fraudsters. Although the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has benefits for the anti-fraud community, fraudsters have access to all the same technology.

It is estimated that 2023 global fraud losses were $485.6 billion dollars, based on reported frauds. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that 95% of frauds are unreported, thus making the actual losses to fraud in the trillions of dollars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we can talk about fraud, we need to have an understanding of what fraud is and who the players are. Simply put, fraud is the intentional act of depriving another entity of something of value by deception or unfair means.

Within the anti-fraud community, those who commit fraud are known as fraudsters or bad actors. Those who are defrauded are victims. Victims include more than just the individual or business, we’ll save that for another post.

Fraud is a crime, regardless of the value of loss or how the act was committed. Many refer to fraud as a “scam”. I don’t like this word because it makes it sound like the victim of the fraud is somehow responsible for being defrauded. There is a sense of shame in saying, “I was scammed”, causing many to not report fraud.

You are not at fault if you have been defrauded or “scammed”.

If you have thoughts or comments you would like to share, please do so. Respectful comments will be answered, disrespectful comments will be deleted.

Thank you for joining me in the fight against fraud.

Kathleen O’Donoghue, CFE