A state-of-the-art review of machine learning techniques for fraud detection research

Abstract

The area of fraud detection1 has been traditionally correlated with mining and text mining. Even before the big data phenomena started in 2008, text mining and mining were used as instruments of fraud detection. However, the limited technological capabilities of the pre-big technologies made it very difficult for researchers to run fraud detection algorithms on large amounts of data. This paper reviews the existing research done in fraud detection across different areas with the aim of investigating the machine learning techniques used and find out their strengths and weaknesses. It used the systematic quantitative literature review methodology to review the research studies in the field of fraud detection research within the last decade using machine learning techniques. Various combinations of keywords were used to identify the pertinent articles and were retrieved from ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplorer Digital Library, Science Direct, Springer Link, etc. This search used a sample of 80 relevant articles (peer-reviewed journals articles and conference papers). The most used machine learning techniques were identified, and their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the conclusion, limitations and future work have been shown.