The Dark Figure and the Cyber Fraud Rise in Europe: Evidence from Spain
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The Dark Figure and the Cyber Fraud Rise in Europe: Evidence from Spain Steven Kemp 1
& Fernando Miró-Llinares
2
& Asier Moneva
2
# Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
A reduction in property crime has been a central feature of criminological discussion in the last 25 years, and numerous studies have used police statistics to identify a drop throughout the Western world. However, fraud, which is included in a broad definition of property crime, has typically not been considered in the analysis. This study examines fraud in the Spanish and European context to further understanding of its nature, prevalence, evolution and role in the overall panorama of property crime. Furthermore, the present study explores the extent to which we are experiencing widespread fraud underreporting to police and the implications of this for crime control policy. To this end, the present paper analyses secondary data provided by the Spanish Ministry of Interior, Spanish and European central banking authorities as well as large-scale victimization surveys from a number of European countries. In contrast to other property crimes, the findings indicate that cyber fraud is rising and that reporting is considerably lower. Some of the main reasons for reporting or not reporting fraud victimization are also identified. The dark figure of fraud suggests the design and evaluation of policing and crime prevention policies based solely on police statistics may be inadequate. Keywords Dark figure . Cyber fraud . Crime trends . Crime drop . Evidence-based prevention . Crime reporting
Defining Before Measuring: an Introduction to Cyber Fraud Fraud is by no means a new phenomenon, as evidenced by the Sicilian corn trader who deceived a potential customer for illicit gain in ancient Greece (Johnstone 1998). Yet, fast
* Steven Kemp [email protected]
1
Department of Public Law. Facultat de Dret, University of Girona, C/ Universitat de Girona, 12, 17003 Girona, Spain
2
CRÍMINA Research Centre for the study and prevention of crime, University Miguel Hernández, Avda. de la Universidad s/n. Edif. Hélike, 03201 Elche, Spain
S. Kemp et al.
forward to the present and fraud in the Internet era persists and has developed and expanded within the social and technological changes related to information and communication technology (Clough 2015; Smith 2010). While the Internet brings innumerable benefits, it also presents criminogenic features (Leukfeldt et al. 2017; Miró-Llinares 2012; Savona and Mignone 2004) which have changed the way much crime is committed. Indeed, many authors talk of “cyber”, “online” or “Internet” fraud (Button and Cross 2017; Levi et al. 2017; MiróLlinares 2013; Williams 2016) to differentiate a modern globalized variant from the traditional face-to-face methods and to highlight the role that the Internet plays in the twenty-first century manifestations of this property crime. Various types of cyber fraud have been highlighted as particularly widespread; for example, card-not-present fraud is a significant threat (Europol 201
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