In Dante’s Inferno, hell is divided into nine circles. On the eighth, penultimate circle sits fraud, just above the ninth circle where Satan is to be found. I agree with the great author’s checklist, as fraud involves a particularly pernicious level of betrayal and deceit.
There was a time when a fraudster or confidence trickster needed to get close to their ‘mark’, or what we’d call a victim. The brilliant 1973 movie, The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, showcased this brilliantly. In the movie, victims were entrapped using costumes, complicated stories, and guile.
Today, however, while most people can see the sense in protecting their homes with strong doors and window locks, many remain oblivious to fact that criminals are now much more likely to gain entry via your computer or internet-enabled mobile phone. The screen with which you view the online world is simultaneously viewing you, with fraud factories springing up daily.
This means that con artists now don’t need to get close to their victims – they can be sitting on the other side of the world, a few clicks on a computer keyboard allowing them to reach into your home and your life savings.
News reports this week suggest that many of those carrying out the frauds are themselves victims, having been conned by supposedly lucrative job adverts which turn out to be bait resulting in them being imprisoned behind guarded walls. The UN estimate that over 120,000 people are being forced to work in such scam factories in Myanmar alone.
The sophistication of some of the scams match that of The Sting, involving promised riches via crypto currency or money exchanges. In another part of the ‘factory’, the scammers prey on the lonely, desperate to find a loving relationship.
While technology has extended the reach of con artists, what hasn’t changed is their preferred mode of attack, exploiting two universal human desires for money and sex.
A recent BBC NI documentary featuring local online entrepreneur, James Blake, highlighted a scam called ‘catfishing’ after his identity was hijacked and used on fake dating sites to lure women into parting with their money.
We also witnessed a spike in fraud attacks in NI during the pandemic, no doubt due to more people spending time on their computers. What mere statistics don’t convey is the misery and suffering this type of crime inflicts, with many victims too embarrassed to even admit they’ve been conned.
While technology has extended the reach of con artists, what hasn’t changed is their preferred mode of attack, exploiting two universal human desires for money and sex
As artificial intelligence grows in sophistication, we can be certain it will be utilised by such criminal gangs. Already ‘deep fakes’ are so good as to be almost indiscernible from reality - imagine how useful that technology will be to fraudsters.
Only this week, we saw a potent example of the efficacy of deep fakes with the Indonesian election, with them being used to promote Prabowo Subianto as a cuddly grandfather figure when, in fact, he had been a repressive general under dictator Suharto.
On Monday, the UK government launched a major campaign called ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ aimed at tackling the ever-rising tide of online criminality. It’s estimated such fraud now accounts for around 40% of all crime in England and Wales, with an estimated cost of £6.8 billion.
However, that the government have focused on making the public more aware of the dangers of fraud rather than attacking the source of the problem is telling. The reason is the fraud factories operate beyond their jurisdiction in countries such as Myanmar or China.
The banking sector also has a responsibility to step up and do more to protect its customers from these criminal gangs. With banks closing high street premises and forcing customers online, not enough has been done by them to counter the tsunami of fraud perpetrated via their industry.
The greatest protection against fraud is for each of us to change our mindset, with every unsolicited electronic interaction being viewed with a healthy degree of suspicion.
Those who argue such cynicism is too high a price to pay for security run the risk of paying in pounds and pence.
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The old adage regarding fraud is that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is – the promise by the UK government of £3.3bn if the Assembly reconvened being a case in point.
We learned this week there was a catch - we must find £113 million of local match-funding. Of course, this isn’t called fraud, it’s called politics, although all too often those two words these days seem interchangeable.
