» Publicado por FINRA FOUNDATION
Non-Traditional Costs of Financial Fraud
Typically, estimates of fraud costs focus primarily on the direct financial costs, specifically the amount of money lost in the fraudulent incident. The FINRA Investor Education Foundation commissioned Applied Research & Consulting LLC (ARC) to conduct a study to explore non-traditional costs of financial and investment fraud, including:
- indirect financial costs, such as legal fees, fees for bounced checks, opportunity costs, lost wages, etc.; and
- non-financial costs, such as stress, depression, frustration, anger, other psychological consequences, sleep deprivation, health issues, lost time, etc. The study focused on financial and investment fraud in which the victim played an active role. Consumer frauds (e.g., fake weight loss programs, “work at home” scams) and other types of financially related fraud in which the victim did not agree to invest his/her money (e.g., identity theft, credit/debit card fraud) were not included in the research.It is also important to note that this study was not intended to address the issue of fraud prevalence. All participants were self-reported victims of financial fraud, therefore the research does not provide a measure of how often financial fraud occurs in the general population, or which types of fraud are more prevalent.Instead, this study offers an in-depth look at financial fraud from the victim’s perspective—how victims experienced the incident, their reactions to the fraud and the potential indirect financial costs and non-financial consequences of having been victimized.
