Digital Fraud Convenience
Advances in public policy and administration (APPA) book series · 2024
Unsolved incidents of digital fraud tend to be presented by criminal justice institutions as sophisticated crime by organized criminals in global criminal networks. Yet there is little evidence for this claim. Rather, in the offender-based perspective on fraud, there seems to be little or no difference between terrestrial and digital fraudsters. In the offense-based perspective, however, there is a significant difference as digital fraudsters operate in cyberspace by application of information and communication technology. This chapter presents some case studies before identifying different convenience propositions for analogue versus digital offenders. In the offense-based perspective, law enforcement needs to follow digital rather than human traces when combatting cybercrime. In doing so, prevention and detection of digital fraudsters need to focus on motives of greed and goal rather than strain and bankruptcy, on access rather than status, on decay rather than chaos, and on rationality rather than other willingness propositions in convenience theory.