Measuring Financial Fraud Victimization in the United States

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Financial fraud is a major problem for individuals and for society, but our understanding of the scope of the problem has been hampered by a lack of valid, national statistics. Key sources of crime statistics in the United States, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), have historically focused on traditional property crimes like burglary and larceny and have not attempted to measure the prevalence of fraud. To address the need for a fraud classification system, the Financial Fraud Research Center (FFRC), a joint project of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation (FINRA Foundation), collaborated with BJS to develop a standardized fraud classification scheme. This classification scheme was used to systematically define types of fraud and translate these types into survey questions that can be administered as a supplement to the NCVS. The presentations in this panel discuss the types of fraud included in the classification scheme, issues related to the measurement of fraud victimization, cognitive testing results, and the types of statistical estimates BJS plans to produce with the SFS data.

Sub Unit

• Area V. Types of Offending / 27. White Collar, Occupational, and Corporate Crime

Division of Special Interest

• Divisions of Special Interest / Division of Victimology

Individual Presentations

• Findings from a Pilot Study to Measure Financial Fraud in the United States - Gary Mottola, FINRA Foundation; Marguerite DeLiema, Stanford Center on Longevity; Martha Deevy, Stanford Center on Longevity; Christine Kieffer, FINRA Foundation

• Measuring Financial Fraud Victimization in the National Crime Victimization Survey - Rachel E Morgan, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice

• Using Cognitive Interviewing to Improve the Measurement of Financial Fraud Victimization - Sarah Cook, RTI International; Christopher Krebs, RTI International; Lynn Langton, Bureau of Justice Statistics; Rachel E Morgan, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice; Nakisa Asefnia, University of South Carolina; Karen Lissy, RTI International

Chair

• Rachel E Morgan, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice