General
More than 30 million consumers are defrauded each year.
3/4 of $ lost in retail fraud is from domestic, rather than international, fraud.
Communication methods for fraud are fairly evenly distributed over print (27%), internet (22%), and television/radio (21%), with an additional 8.4% by telemarketers.
1 in 4 investment fraud victims were contacted by the fraudster via the telephone.
Money Lost
An average of $1.2 million is lost for every workplace fraud committed.
In retail fraud alone, the annual cost is over $100 billion.
The average cost to consumers from retail fraud was $631 in 2010.
The Federal Fraud Enforcement Task Force uncovered more than $8billion in securities, commodities, and investment fraud losses alone in 2010.
“An estimated 579 million Euros were lost to fraud in the Netherlands in 2008.”
Reporting
“77% of fraud within companies are not publicly reported upon detection.”
“Only 1 in 3 older fraud victims admit to being scammed — compared to about 1 in 2 victims under age 55.”
“Less than 1 in 3 fraud victims report their victimization to some authority.”
“Overall, only 4 in 10 fraud victims admit to being victimized when asked directly.”
Victims
“The factors that go into making people vulnerable are not well understood.” -Carstensen
“Everyone is an investor, which means everyone is exposed.” -Shadel
“Every con man I’ve ever interviewed said women ‘ask all these questions, and they want to know stuff.’ Whereas with the men, they get them into an ego play … they’re puffing their chest out.” -Shadel.
More than 30 million consumers are defrauded each year.
“The most commonly reported consumer fraud victim in 2005 was for fraudulent weight loss products - ~4.8 million adults.”
“Only 1/2 of known investment fraud victims admit to ever losing money due to being misled or defrauded.”
Investment fraud victims score higher on financial literacy measures (av. score 58%) than non-victims (av. score 41%).
Lottery fraud victims score lowest on financial literacy measures (av. score 32%).
Investment fraud victims are almost twice as likely to hold a college degree than a non-victim.
Investment fraud victims are 20% more likely to be married than non-victims.
9 out of 10 investment fraud victims are men.
3/4 of business opportunity fraud victims are men.
4 in 10 lottery fraud victims are men.
Fraudsters
Half of all workplace fraudsters are senior managers.
8 in 10 investment fraud victims who admitted being defrauded were introduced to the fraudster through a friend or family member. Of those, more than half were in-person.
Detection
1 in 7 workplace frauds are discovered by chance.
It takes an average of 4.2 years to detect a workplace fraud in North America.”
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