What is Scams and Swindles: A Typological Analysis of Confidence Schemes, Using Elder Fraud, Romance Scams, and Sextortion as Examples

• In Event: Property crimes and embezzlement

Abstract

Except for uninhabited regions, fraudulent behaviors engaged in by con artists basically can be found in all human societies in the modern world. As a result of this prevalence, scams and swindles, just like language, politics, and religion, are a cultural or human universal. Given that scams and swindles are common to such an extent that they have become a global phenomenon in the 2020s, it is not surprising that scams and swindles are multifaceted activities. For example, some scams and swindles are merely petty offenses because they did not involve complicated skills or professional expertise. In contrast, certain scams and swindles are highly specialized crimes because they include elements and players like intricate schemes, computer programmers, and/or software engineers. Given that scams and swindles are highly diversified offenses, classifying these illegal conducts to help crime researchers and law enforcement agents explain why some people fall victim to confidence games seems necessary. In terms of constructing a typology for scams and swindles, three dramaturgical concepts (i.e., frame, fabrication, and keying) proposed by Goffman are chosen as parameters in this paper. Then each of these factors is divided into two levels: indistinguishable (I) or distinguishable (D) distance between real and forged worlds for frame, unsophisticated (U) or sophisticated (S) design for fabrication, and consistency (C) or transformation (T) for keying. Based on the division listed above, scams and swindles are classified into eight categories (i.e., IUC, IUT, ISC, IST, DUC, DUT, DSC, and DST types) in this article. Each of these categories will be exemplified by a reported case of elderly fraud, romance scams, or sextortion.

Author

• Hua-Lun Huang, University of Louisiana at Lafayette