Fraud Terms

Below is a glossary of definitions and terminology currently and commonly used within the fraud and financial crime industry?

• Account/Facility Takeover
  The perpetrator of the fraud impersonates a victim and falsely claims a change of address in order to ‘takeover’ and control existing financial products. Examples include, although not exclusive to account/facility takeover, previous address fraud and previous occupier fraud.

• Application Fraud
  Applications containing material falsehoods or false supporting documentation, when the name used has not been identified as false.

• Bin Raiding
  In order to help facilitate identity theft fraudsters are known to raid household rubbish in bins to search for useful documents thrown out by unwitting householders such as bank and credit card statements, utility bills etc.

• Change of Address Fraud
  Bogus 'changes of address' are increasingly used by criminals to commit fraud and are often used to facilitate an account/facility takeover. The fraudster obtains details of a genuine customer's account and then contacts the business to advise that he has changed address. This is usually accompanied or followed by a request for items of value such as a chequebook, debit card or statement of account that are sent to the bogus ‘new’ address. A false change of address is used to facilitate previous address fraud and account/facility takeover fraud.

• Corporate Fraud
  The dishonest abuse of position, usually by senior members of staff, to facilitate the misrepresentation of a company's true financial position e.g. Enron/Worldcom/Parmalat etc.

• Corporate Identity Theft
  The misappropriation of the identity of a company or business, without that entity’s knowledge or consent, usually in order to facilitate a fraud.

• Day of the Jackal Fraud
  A dead child is impersonated years later when they would have become an adult to create a false identity which can be used to facilitate identity fraud.

• Identity Fraud
  The creation or adoption of a fictitious or false identity to facilitate illegal or fraudulent activity. This usually involves the use of stolen or forged identity documents such as a passport or driving licence to obtain goods or services by deception. Includes cases of false identity, identity theft, impersonation of the deceased, facility takeover and other impersonations.
  
• Identity Theft
  The misappropriation of the identity of another person, without their knowledge or consent. Those with a good financial history are often targeted usually in order to facilitate identity fraud.

• Phishing
  The use of ‘spoof’ emails and websites that are designed to deceive recipients into divulging personal financial data to facilitate identity fraud e.g. credit card numbers, account numbers, user names, passwords etc.

• Total Identity Hi-Jack
  The fraudster obtains extensive personal details on an individual allowing a comprehensive fraud encompassing the totality of someone’s identity. The subsequent fraud can include in excess of 20-30 financial institutions.