He’s a fraudster, a bilk, a cheater and a conman. A chiseler, a dirty shark and a sharpie. A finagler, skinner, swindler and trickster1 . Who knew there were so many words for fraudster?
The varied incarnations of the fraudster talks to the changing, pervasive and culturally agnostic nature of fraud. Wherever there is trust, there is fraud. All fraud includes a betrayal of trust. This makes fraud one of the more heinous crimes in an age where many of our economic interactions are based entirely on trust: when I buy something at a shop I seldom question whether it is what it claims to be; when I swipe my card and am told I have paid a certain amount, I do not question whether that was what actually left my account; when an expert makes a pronouncement, am I to question every comment? However, increasingly, we are required to be sceptical of anything which is represented to us, and this is because of fraudsters in their various guises.
The erosion of trust is a basic social problem, which businesses are increasingly expected to address and evidence through the social aspects of their environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs and reporting.
