Articles tagged with Fraud
A recent USF study found that male victims of financial sextortion experience significant financial and psychological effects, including anxiety and shame. The research highlights the importance of caution on dating apps and social media to reduce risk, as well as seeking help and support if affected.
A study led by UC Riverside highlights the importance of rigorous participant verification procedures in online health research to maintain data quality. Researchers found that combining automated screening, human review, and participant verification can substantially improve confidence in online research findings.
Fraud is a widespread and complex phenomenon that affects millions worldwide. The authors of a recent study emphasize the need for coordinated efforts to mitigate its impact. They argue that psychologists can play a vital role in understanding scams and developing effective countermeasures, particularly in the age of AI.
Research from the University of Texas at Austin found that pandemic loan fraud explained 22.5% of average housing price increases in 2020-2021. This type of fraud hurt individuals who bought houses at inflated prices, and had secondary effects on auto title registrations and other economic indicators.
New research suggests that overly aggressive whistleblower incentives can cut down internal communication, allowing problems to go unresolved. Regulators should consider a more calibrated approach to encourage reporting without discouraging internal information-sharing.
Historian Dr Michael Edwards reveals that Samuel Pepys curated his correspondence to hide his connections to slavery and slave trading. In a surprising twist, Pepys rejected an offer of an enslaved boy as a bribe, demonstrating his sensitivity over the issue.
Researchers have developed a low-cost fake drug detector that uses an infrared sensor to track pill dissolution rates. The device can identify legitimate medications from counterfeit ones with high accuracy, making it a valuable tool in the fight against global health threats.
A new digital and legally binding fingerprint developed at the University of Copenhagen makes products impossible to counterfeit. Royal Copenhagen is among the first brands in the world to use this solution, resulting in immediate transparency across their distribution chain.
A new study by the University of Surrey found that 16% of UK adults were asked for a bribe in the last year, while 5.8 million people were invited to move money linked to crime. The risk is concentrated among younger adults and men, with those in the finance sector being targeted most frequently.
Researchers found critical weaknesses in offline payment systems that can be bypassed to enable fraudulent high-value transactions. The study highlights the need for better coordination between providers to ensure convenience doesn't create new opportunities for fraud.
A new study by Dr. Rasha Kassem and Professor Umut Turksen found that police officers perceive fraud as low-harm and low-priority, leading to weakened investigations and limited victim support. The researchers advocated for targeted training, investment in cyber and financial forensics, and cultural change within police organisations.
Two former Department of Justice scientists argue for transformative crime prevention research prioritizing social justice alongside public safety. They emphasize the need for research incorporating community perspectives and collaborative approaches to prevent harm and promote justice.
Researchers found that mobile users were less likely to click on phishing links compared to PC users, especially for lower-risk URLs. The study suggests that device use settings affect users' risk assessment abilities, leading to more avoidant behavior on mobile devices.
A new study uncovers coordinated efforts of paper mills, brokers, and infiltrated journals to fabricate research, pay for authorships, and citations. Millions of dollars are involved in these processes, with the problem so widespread that it's outpacing legitimate scientific publications.
A new book by Rutgers University professor Ko-Lin Chin investigates the operations of illicit businesses in China's counterfeit industry. The author examines individual characteristics, economic aspects, relationships with organized crime, and demand for counterfeit goods.
Researchers from the University of Surrey investigate how senior citizens are targeted by cybercriminals due to societal biases, including ageism and stereotypes that portray them as frail and gullible. The study highlights the need for educational initiatives and support systems to empower older adults to protect themselves online.
A novel method generates binary class labels in highly imbalanced datasets, addressing the challenge of labeling severely imbalanced data. The approach outperformed traditional methods, providing a more efficient way to identify fraud while minimizing false positives.
A Florida Atlantic University study reveals that middle-class white-collar offenders face unique challenges during reentry into society, including stigma, anxiety, and fear of public exposure. Despite these challenges, they tend to secure employment and stable housing more easily than non-white-collar offenders.
New research suggests that educating low-knowledge luxury consumers about the appeal of counterfeit goods can help combat the trillion-dollar counterfeit market. Consumers with high subjective knowledge in this domain are less likely to partake in counterfeits, while those with lower knowledge are more drawn to them.
The event will address questions on artificial intelligence's power to reshape finance, including personalized banking and risk assessment. Top fintech experts from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and Coinbase Institute will participate in a panel discussion.
Research published in PLOS ONE found that older adults in the U.K. are more likely to be repeatedly victimized by cybercrime, resulting in significant financial loss. This demographic is particularly vulnerable due to factors such as health conditions and social isolation.
New research from Lancaster University highlights the devastating impact of the UK's unprecedented use of citizenship stripping on British children trapped in dire camps in North-East Syria. The study calls for a children's right approach to repatriation decision-making to ensure safe return and family reunification.
The Einstein Foundation Berlin presents the €500,000 award to recognize institutions and researchers who improve research quality and robustness. Researchers like Elisabeth Bik, PubPeer, and PixelQuality are honored for their work on promoting quality and accountability in research.
A comprehensive framework for securing mobile money applications has been ratified by the United Nations, marking a significant step toward safer digital financial transactions. The framework includes 120 detailed recommendations and controls to ensure comprehensive protection for users and transactions.
A new study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers reveals that auditors with high honesty-humility scores are more likely to report financial misstatements, while those with low scores do not. This suggests that screening auditors for honesty-humility could enhance monitoring quality and prevent costly oversight failures.
A new study reveals a surge in cryptocurrency fraud committed by young, tech-savvy male offenders, with 55% of cases involving American targets, posing significant challenges to traditional law enforcement.
Researchers found that older adults who were more attuned to their heartbeat were better at spotting liars and phishing emails. This study suggests that training people in body awareness could improve deception detection skills, particularly among the elderly, who lose an estimated $28 billion annually to financial scams.
A nationally representative survey reveals older adults' leading health-related concerns include rising healthcare costs and financial scams. The survey also highlights significant differences in concern levels by gender, political ideology, and demographic groups.
A new study shows that healthcare costs, including medical care, prescription drugs, and long-term care, are among the top health-related concerns of older adults heading into the US election. Financial scams and fraud also made the top six concerns, with significant differences among age, gender, and political ideology.
A new poll suggests health-related costs are a major concern for older Americans of all backgrounds, with five out of six very concerning issues involving health costs. Nearly half say they're very concerned about the cost of prescription medications, while nearly half also express concerns about dental care.
Researchers developed a novel AI technique to detect Medicare fraud in big data, using Random Undersampling and supervised feature selection. The method improved classification performance, especially when reducing features, and outperformed models with all available features.
A study by UCLA researchers found that nearly 20% of patients with serious illnesses listed as alive in their medical records were actually deceased according to California data. This discrepancy led to hundreds of wasteful follow-up outreach efforts, straining resources and healthcare workers' time.
Research reveals fake Australian IDs are widely sold on dark web marketplaces, used by crime rings and terrorists for various illicit activities. The study aims to inform law enforcement and security organisations in targeting specific types of fraud.
A new special issue of Criminology & Public Policy explores cybercrime and cybersecurity, highlighting the need for empirical testing and systematic analysis. The 11 studies in the issue build the knowledge base for understanding and addressing cybercrime, improving cybersecurity through theories and methods in criminology.
A recent study from the University of Florida suggests that financial fraud may attract more students to major in accounting, rather than deterring them. The research found a 4% increase in the likelihood of majoring in accounting when local financial frauds are covered by the news media during high school years.
A behavioral experiment involving 644 older adults found that many are susceptible to government impersonation scams, including those without cognitive impairment. The study highlights the need for awareness and education among this demographic to prevent such scams.
A study of over 170,000 students aged 15 found that one in five from low-income families or deprived areas are vulnerable to phishing. Teenagers with poor learning skills are also more likely to fall victim to email scams.
The new tool, SnorCall, analyzes unsolicited calls to shed light on robocall trends and types of scams. It extracted information from over 232,000 robocalls, including phone numbers used in scams, helping regulators and law enforcement take action.
A study by Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine found that Medicare fraud in home healthcare billing spread rapidly across U.S. regions between 2002 and 2009, driven by characteristics such as shared patients, high expenditures, and rapid growth in the number of home health agencies. The researchers developed a novel network analysis ...
A study by Anglia Ruskin University found that Madoff's business dealings, trial, and prison time revealed a high score on psychopathy scales. The research warns companies to identify and prevent corporate psychopaths who can bring down organizations and economies through recklessness and greed.
A study by researchers at the University of Toronto found that under typical surveillance, about 3% of US companies exhibit financial misrepresentation. However, during a period of heightened scrutiny following the Enron scandal, this rate tripled to 9%, indicating that at least 10% of companies may be involved in fraud.
A study by Georgia State University researchers identifies common techniques and forms of deception used by scammers to target victims on dating apps. The team analyzed nearly 10,000 vetted reports to develop a model for victim vulnerability and resilience.
A group of researchers from Chung-Ang University have summarized the applications based on anomaly detection in multivariate time series. They evaluated the current state-of-the-art anomaly detection techniques and addressed the challenges associated with them, providing a thorough overview of the applications for anomaly detection in ...
A new study at Carnegie Mellon University found that group cohesion reduces whistleblowing tendencies within an organization but increases them outside of the group. This challenges prevailing views on whistleblowing and highlights the importance of considering relational dynamics in organizational interventions.
New research finds that believing COVID-19 is a hoax can lead to increased belief in conspiracy theories and even suspect the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. The study proposes the 'gateway conspiracy' hypothesis, suggesting that one conspiracy theory triggers distrust in institutions.
A recent study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that fraud victimization is associated with increased blood pressure in older adults. Men were more likely to experience elevated post-fraud blood pressure, which may lead to poor health outcomes over time.
A study by University of Sydney neuroscientists found that people's brains can detect AI-generated fake faces with a 54% accuracy rate. However, verbal identification was only successful 37% of the time, highlighting the potential for using brain activity to flag deepfakes on digital platforms.
A new study from Keck School of Medicine of USC suggests that willingness to give away money may be linked to the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease. Participants who gave more money scored significantly lower on cognitive tests known to be sensitive to Alzheimer's disease.
A study found that former Arthur Andersen employees now provide higher quality audits than their peers, with lower rates of financial restatements and manipulated earnings. They also invested more hours in verifying financial statements, resulting in higher fees for clients.
A new study co-authored by Indiana University professor M. Daniel Beneish finds that the M-Score model is still the most economically viable means of predicting corporate fraud. The model's success rate has been doubled, but at a higher cost of false positives, making it less practical for auditors to use in practice.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in the criminal justice system, highlighting issues with family and domestic violence, gang activity, and police-community interactions. Scholars from the American Society of Criminology investigate these concerns in a special issue, exploring lessons learned and policy implications.
A study led by NTU Singapore found that combining transparency with kinder management styles reduces collusion attempts among employees. The researchers conducted a roleplaying experiment in Amsterdam, assigning participants as managers or employees and observing the effects of increased transparency on collaboration.
A new paper from the University of Portsmouth argues that bribery and corruption can be prevented at huge sporting events. Researchers explored perspectives of anti-corruption specialists, sport governance officials, athletes, coaches, club officials, and journalists to identify common concerns and recommendations for reforms.
A recent study published in Justice Quarterly found that Fortune 500 firms with strong growth profiles are more susceptible to financial securities fraud. These companies were nearly four times as likely to be involved in fraud than smaller, struggling companies.
Researchers at University of Göttingen and Frankfurt have developed an approach to detect fake news in the stock market. The new method uses machine learning and linguistic characteristics to identify suspicious messages, making it harder for scammers to evade detection.
A new study suggests that corporate fraud cases are associated with a 2.3% increase in local financially motivated crimes, including robbery and theft. The effect is strongest in smaller cities with fewer job opportunities and higher income inequality.
A Washington State University study found that private prisons lead to an average increase of 178 new prisoners per million population per year. The length of sentences also increases, especially in nonviolent crimes with more leeway in sentencing guidelines.
A recent study found that CFOs are reluctant to blow the whistle on potential fraud when their company is under pressure to meet a financial target. Financial managers are adept at detecting red flags, but become less willing to report externally when facing pressure.
A new study from the University of Notre Dame found that ethics training can reduce misconduct in the financial sector. Researchers analyzed nearly 1.2 million investment advisers and found those with more ethics training were one-fourth less likely to commit offenses.
Patients treated by providers later excluded from Medicare for committing fraud and abuse were more likely to die than similar patients treated by non-excluded physicians, nurses, and other professionals. The study estimates that fraud and abuse contributed to 6,700 premature deaths in 2013 alone.