Assessing the Prevalence and Costs of Financial Fraud in America

Understanding and Using Data From the National Financial Capability Study

Financial fraud is a major problem for both individuals and our society, but our understanding of the scope of the problem has been hampered by a lack of valid, national statistics. Key sources of crime statistics in the United States, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, have historically focused on traditional property crimes like burglary and larceny and have not attempted to measure the prevalence of fraud. To address the need for a fraud classification system, the Financial Fraud Research Center, a joint project of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, collaborated with BJS to develop a standardized fraud classification scheme. This scheme systematically defined types of fraud and translated them into survey questions to be administered as a supplement to the NCVS.

This webinar will discuss the types of fraud included in the classification scheme, issues related to the measurement of fraud victimization, cognitive testing results, and the types of statistical estimates BJS plans to produce on financial fraud.

Presenters:

Gary R. Mottola, Ph.D., Research Director, FINRA Investor Education Foundation
Dr. Rachel E. Morgan, Statistician, Victimization Statistics Unit, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice
Sarah Cook, Survey Methodologist, RTI International