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Part of my practice is financial fraud investigation. >One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never dis

by ABCLAW 6y ago

Part of my practice is financial fraud investigation. >One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered. A lot. More than you'd expect. And by people and organizations you wouldn't expect. However, most people are objectively terrible at performing fraud. The things that ultimately lead to people being caught are so simple.

sciurus 6y ago
What are the types of mistakes that commonly lead to people being caught? I'm asking, uh, for a friend. :-)
- coldtea 6y ago
  Pretending to be asking for a friend on a public forum is a common one...
  - manwithaplan 6y ago
    Yeah, asking on a public forum is how they got altoid (Ross Ulbricht).
sokoloff 6y ago
I wonder how many people get away with fraud because so many other people are so bad at it. Perhaps being just better than terrible is enough to not be found out because things are generally as they seem.
- eru 6y ago
  Some people are caught for their perfect crimes, because they can't keep themselves from bragging about them in the pub. (And I can see the temptation.)
m463 6y ago
And I would imagine that's a self-selecting population you're working with.
jimz 6y ago
Yep, working on the other side (criminal defense) I quickly, within a year or two, found that fraud, or what the laws would consider fraud that could be prosecuted, tend to unravel extremely quickly in most cases, planning is almost always inadequate if they wanted to get away if any planning is involved at all, and common OPSEC failures tank a great deal of them almost right off the bat. Also, there's a definite correlation between how many co-conspirators are involved with how quickly their scheme is discovered. This goes for all conspiracies under the legal definition - when you need more than two people to agree to a common plan or purpose to commit something, it turns out keeping even just a partnership quiet and in check is really hard for all but the most simple schemes. OF course that does also imply that the better, more organized outfits never come through my (public defender) office and so, there's a selection bias there, but the volume of cases is very high and it's hard to imagine that this represents at least a large portion of acts that caused enough damage/loss to elicit police attention. I think there are probably some very talented solo operators who did their homework and have contingency plans and have OPSEC down who are able to pull off some long running schemes that may never be uncovered, just knowing the points of failure in th processes I've seen, but the amount of specialized knowledge and discipline required is going to be comparable to what's required to succeed in almost any field. Except for the very few at the top of the chain that nobody knows about, most people are better off getting a real job instead.A lot of those people who engage in fraud do it and get caught because ths isn't what they wanted to do butout of necessity, greed, or shortsighted assumptions they opportunistically engaged in the scheme. The internet does enable, I believe, single individuals to commit long term fraud operations as effectively lone-wolf actors whose necessity to employ a service offered elsewhere can be effectively done anonymously, and these are the dedicated, professional, and sometimes sometimes ideologically engaged types whose choice to engage is a long-term project and the sheer amount of knowledge in divergent fields of expertise required makes me wonder that if it wouldn't be better served to actually run amnesty programs to get these people into the legitimate sector even as consultants if not corporate jobs because our retributive criminal justice system renders that basically impossible. A bug bounty for fraud, perhaps? Just a thought.

by ABCLAW 6y ago

sciurus 6y ago

What are the types of mistakes that commonly lead to people being caught? I'm asking, uh, for a friend. :-)

coldtea 6y ago
Pretending to be asking for a friend on a public forum is a common one...
- manwithaplan 6y ago
  Yeah, asking on a public forum is how they got altoid (Ross Ulbricht).

sokoloff 6y ago

I wonder how many people get away with fraud because so many other people are so bad at it. Perhaps being just better than terrible is enough to not be found out because things are generally as they seem.

eru 6y ago
Some people are caught for their perfect crimes, because they can't keep themselves from bragging about them in the pub. (And I can see the temptation.)

m463 6y ago

And I would imagine that's a self-selecting population you're working with.

jimz 6y ago

Yep, working on the other side (criminal defense) I quickly, within a year or two, found that fraud, or what the laws would consider fraud that could be prosecuted, tend to unravel extremely quickly in most cases, planning is almost always inadequate if they wanted to get away if any planning is involved at all, and common OPSEC failures tank a great deal of them almost right off the bat. Also, there's a definite correlation between how many co-conspirators are involved with how quickly their scheme is discovered. This goes for all conspiracies under the legal definition - when you need more than two people to agree to a common plan or purpose to commit something, it turns out keeping even just a partnership quiet and in check is really hard for all but the most simple schemes. OF course that does also imply that the better, more organized outfits never come through my (public defender) office and so, there's a selection bias there, but the volume of cases is very high and it's hard to imagine that this represents at least a large portion of acts that caused enough damage/loss to elicit police attention. I think there are probably some very talented solo operators who did their homework and have contingency plans and have OPSEC down who are able to pull off some long running schemes that may never be uncovered, just knowing the points of failure in th processes I've seen, but the amount of specialized knowledge and discipline required is going to be comparable to what's required to succeed in almost any field. Except for the very few at the top of the chain that nobody knows about, most people are better off getting a real job instead.A lot of those people who engage in fraud do it and get caught because ths isn't what they wanted to do butout of necessity, greed, or shortsighted assumptions they opportunistically engaged in the scheme. The internet does enable, I believe, single individuals to commit long term fraud operations as effectively lone-wolf actors whose necessity to employ a service offered elsewhere can be effectively done anonymously, and these are the dedicated, professional, and sometimes sometimes ideologically engaged types whose choice to engage is a long-term project and the sheer amount of knowledge in divergent fields of expertise required makes me wonder that if it wouldn't be better served to actually run amnesty programs to get these people into the legitimate sector even as consultants if not corporate jobs because our retributive criminal justice system renders that basically impossible. A bug bounty for fraud, perhaps? Just a thought.