Fraud, deceptive strategies, and vulnerability: A study on how we are exploited when we are most at risk

Research problem and specific questionsThis research project explores the strategies and approaches used to commit fraud against individuals in vulnerable positions.

The project´s questions focus, firstly, on how potential victims are identified and selected and how the victims´ situation affects the strategies designed; secondly, how perpetrators design fraudulent offers and use different techniques to convince victims and carry out crimes; and how the victims´ actions affect the course of events and its outcome.

The project aims to contribute to a nationally and internationally under-explored research area.Data and methodThe project uses case study methodology to collect and analyze empirical material from legal, regulatory, and disciplinary proceedings.

This material is well suited to answering the project´s questions as it consists of statements and documents from different parties who all seek to influence the determination of the sequence of events explored in the project and through which fraud occurs.

In addition, the material and methodology complement international research in this area, as the latter has mainly been based on the accounts of individual parties rather than several parties at a time or verified by other types of material.Societal relevance and utilisationThe lack of knowledge about the strategies and practices by which victims are identified and selected, sought out, and defrauded is a problem because fraud is one of the major crime categories of our time and occurs in social arenas where people move daily.

Therefore, exposure risk is a tangible part of people´s everyday lives.

The project, therefore, intends to contribute knowledge so that actors in the state and municipality, companies, and associations can design information campaigns, training, and other crime prevention measures with precision and accuracy.Plan for project realisationThe project will be carried out over a three-year period where the funding applied for essentially covers salary costs for the time required for the collection and coding of empirical material (year 1), processing and analysis (year 2), and the writing of publications and other research presentations (year 3).

The material is analyzed using sequence and script analysis, where the course of events is broken down into specific sequences that allow for the systematic identification of similarities and differences between individual crime incidents and potential crime prevention factors.