Exposing Fraud

CHAPTER 1 Cutting Through the Maze

Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not.

—E. R. Beadle

  INTRODUCTION

Cutting through the Maze.’ This chapter attempts to codify and achieve a succinct understanding of fraud as a clear (but not over-simplified) explanation. Avoiding the incessant circular discussion around definitions saves time and gains more convictions. Moreover, a common output of this problem among others, being that professionals across investigations, risk and data analysis, audit, are often at odds with each other with the ever-present dilemma on agreeing what fraud actually is.

Risk management and prevention are alluded to but the main emphasis of this book is investigation, to introduce you to the issues and nuances of fraud awareness from a fresh perspective, with practicalities to combine with your skills, side-by-side.

The run of this first chapter commences with a fundamental engagement of fraud definitions, leading to more involved engagement with the theoretical perspectives and explanations, which are then closed in and combined with practical guidance to reassure you that the definitions are mostly in common with each other, to then lead to a chapter summary of accepted definitions. Therefore, this chapter does not purport or claim to ‘reconcile’ definitions (which cannot be done) but forms the fundamentals to ...