Abstract
In the Internet age, identity fraud has become quite a popular way to steal money—resulting in substantial numbers of victims as evidenced by victimization surveys. This article focuses on people who have been illegally debited from their bank account, one of the most common forms of identity fraud. For this group, we examine their patterns of action to report the incident to banks and police, and their success in achieving reimbursement of the money they lost. Following the argument of the Netherlands Council for Government Policy, it is assumed here that the “capacity to act” varies between people. In this context, it may lead to differential outcomes for victims after ID fraud. More specifically, we expect that groups in a socially disadvantaged position (low-educated) as well as impulsive people will more often refrain from contacting formal agencies (bank, police), and therefore more frequently lack reimbursement and remain with larger financial losses. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory and Black’s theory on the behavior of law offer additional insight in support of this argument. We use data from 636 victims that were surveyed in the LISS panel, which is based on a Dutch representative population sample. Most of our hypotheses are confirmed by the data.
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Notes
- 1.
Considering the relative rarity of high eventual losses, we performed robustness checks on these results by using a three-category dependent variable (with 50 euros or more as the highest loss category) and four-category dependent variable (with 100 euros or more as the highest loss category). This yielded very similar results, with the exception of the relation for “initial loss between 50 and 99 euros.” In these alternative estimations, this category had higher eventual losses.
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van Wilsem, J., Sipma, T., Leijsen, E.Mv. (2021). Show Me the Money! Identity Fraud Losses, Capacity to Act, and Victims’ Efforts for Reimbursement. In: Weulen Kranenbarg, M., Leukfeldt, R. (eds) Cybercrime in Context. Crime and Justice in Digital Society, vol I. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60527-8_8
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