Fraud 2009 bad, 2010 better?

Abstract

2009 was a year where fraud was rarely out of the headlines. To date there have been an astonishing 292 799 reports of fraud in the global media during 2009. The biggest fraud ever – involving Bernard Madoff and $65 billion – reached court and, in the midst of a recession, almost every area of the economy showed major increases in fraud. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that fraud was a major cause of the recession, with the widespread sale of financial securities based on sub-prime mortgages, which were known to be worthless.