Fraud targeting the elderly has in recent years received more and more attention, although fraudulent behavior against the elderly only constitute a small part of all reported fraud offences the fact that perpetrators intentionally and systematically utilizing their vulnerability should be taken seriously. It is therefore considered important to expand the knowledge regarding elderly exposure to fraud, but not because of the volume of crime rather because of the particular vulnerability the elderly possesses. The present study intends to examine how perpetrators of fraud find the elderly victims and whether or not the principle of public access to information affects elderly exposure to this type of crime. The study has been conducted through semi-structured interviews with individuals from the Swedish police authorities, all with connections to fraud and crime against elderly in different ways. Trough the thematic analysis, it emerged that perpetrators find their intended victims with the help of websites that mass-publish personal information and that this mainly takes place within the framework of organized crime. The principle of public access to information therefore tends to be an important phenomenon to consider in the work of making elderly less suitable targets of fraud.

Studies indicate that fraud is a growing issue in Sweden, outpacing law enforcement’s efforts to maintain it. There is limited research concerning welfare fraud, the aspects of prevention, and what processes have worked in Sweden. The prevention strategies need to progress towards this development considering that welfare fraud is a crime which affects every person in the welfare state. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate and analyse the prevention strategies against welfare fraud in Sweden through semi-structured interviews with six officials from the County Government of Kalmar and Skåne. The administration process was also investigated with the expectation to identify possible ways to develop preventive strategies. The Situational Action Theory was used as a tool to discuss and describe possible ways to prevent welfare fraud. The result showed that the tendency to report welfare fraud among officials is low. There is also a lack of cooperation between different governmental organisations and significant differences in the control work that varies between being thorough and absent. Although the county governments have started to examine the issue of welfare fraud, the results implicate that the issue is not as heavily prioritized as it needs to be. Future research is crucial. The controls and prevention strategies against welfare fraud within the County Governments needs to be developed further.

In “web-based scams”, scam websites provide fraudulent business or fake services to steal money and sensitive information from unsuspecting victims. Despite the researchers’ efforts to develop anti-scam detection techniques, the scams continue to evolve and cause online threats. State-of-the-art anti-scam research still faces several challenges, such as automatically acquiring a labeled scam dataset and providing early detection and prevention mechanisms to attacks that use cryptocurrency as a payment medium. In this thesis, we implement a data-driven model to detect and track web-based scams with a web presence. Given a few scam samples, our model formulates scam-related search queries and uses them on multiple search engines to collect data about the websites to which victims are directed when they search online for sites that may be related to the scam. After collecting a sufficient corpus of web pages, our model semi-automatically clusters the search results and creates a labeled training dataset with minimal human interaction. Our model proactively looks for scam pages and monitors their evolution over time rather than waiting for the scam to be reported. Whenever a new scam instance is detected, the model sends it automatically to the eCrime eXchange data warehouse in real-time. We have used the model to investigate and gain knowledge on two scams; the “Game Hack” Scam (GHS) and the “Bitcoin Generator Scam” (BGS). To the best of our knowledge, GHS and BGS have not been well studied so far, and this is the first systematic study of both scams. GHS targets game players, in which the attackers attempt to convince victims that they will be provided with free in-game advantages for their favorite game. Before claiming these advantages, the victims are supposed to complete one or more tasks, such as filling out “market research” forms and installing suspicious executable files on their machines. Over a year of crawling, we uncovered more than 5,900 unique domains. We estimate that these domains have been accessed at least 150 million times from 2014 until 2019. BGS is a simple system in which the scammers promise to “generate” new bitcoins using the ones sent to them. BGS is not a very sophisticated attack; the modus operandi is to put up some web page that contains the address to send the money and wait for the payback. Over 21 months of crawling, we found more than 3,000 addresses directly associated with the scam, hosted on over 1,200 domains. Overall, these addresses have received (at least) over 9.6 million USD. Our analysis showed that a small group of scammers controls the majority of the received funds. The top two groups have received around 6 million USD, which is more than half of the total funds received by the scam addresses.

This diploma thesis deals with insurance fraud committed in both civil household insurance and real estate insurance. The actuality of insurance fraud and also the fact that this theme is very intriguing, is what drawn me to this topic. The first theorethical chapter offers a general description of insurance fraud. The second chapter then deals with the analysis of national statistics of insurance fraud in all areas of insurance, as well as the estimated numbers in a surveyed area of insurance. The aim was to determine factors leading to insurance fraud and evaluate risk groups of these crimes. These findings could be used to propose preventative measures. The third chapter therefore examines the attitude of modern society toward insurance fraud. It also explores the use of an online questionnaire in an attempt to build a profile of the average insurance fraud offender. Following chapter outlines the preventive and repressive measures, while the fifth chapter describes the detection and investigation of insurance fraud in practice. The sixth chapter presents specific cases of insurance fraud detected in surveyed area of insurance fraud. In the conclusion, the thesis summarizes findings and reserves as well as suggestions for improvement.

The aim of this master's thesis is focusing on the problem of committing insurance frauds in Czech Republic. It is divided into separated chapters. In the introductory part I focused on a theoretical explanation of the terms related to this topic. The following section focuses on explaining the classification and the source of insurance frauds, the reasons of committing these criminal offenses, and the general profile of the perpetrator. Furthermore, in the theoretical part, I outlined the ways of the insurance fraud investigations. The goal of the thesis was to focus on the factors directing to insurance frauds Therefore, the analytic part concentrates on the analysis and the evaluation/assessment of the given statistical data results related to insurance frauds. In the end, for a better understanding, I mentioned a few revealed cases of these criminal offenses, and suggested certain preventive arrangements/actions against their potential happening or their easier revelation (in the future). Finally, I evaluated by analyzing risk groups committing insurance fraud and the main factors that lead to insurance fraud.

This thesis deals with the problem of insurance fraud in the Czech Republic, focusing on insurance fraud in the real estate market. The work is divided into three parts. The first part involves a definition of the basic concepts of terminology used in the field of insurance, insurance fraud legislation as well as division, causes and investigation of insurance fraud. The second part deals with a statistical comparison and analysis of data within the insurance market, with a focus on individual regions of the Czech Republic and the identification of indicators of insurance fraud in these regions. The third part comprises deals with the calculation of indemnity during the claim settlement and the issue of insurance fraud in the real estate market.

The ability to measure the financial health of a company is becoming an increasingly serious issue. One only needs to think of the widely published irregularities in companies such as Enron, Parmalat and Macmed to grasp something of the magnitude of the losses and other problems that investors can face if they do not have the ability to “predict” possible problems. There are individuals who are constantly identifying new and ingenious ways to deceive their customers, investors, the government and others. It is important for parties with an interest in a company to devise new ways to identify how financial analyses can be used to protect their interests. Managers are primarily responsible for the prevention and identification of accounting irregularities. Unfortunately, at the same time, they may also be assumed to be the primary perpetrators of accounting irregularities, because they are in a position to manipulate accounting records and bypass control measures more easily than anyone else in a company. The main aim of this study is to determine whether financial analysis and interpretation can be applied by interested parties to measure financial health and by implication identify accounting irregularities. Proof that this is possible has the potential to be used in analyses, by all parties with an interest in a company, to determine financial health and to identify irregularities in the financial statements. The study begins with a literature review, which provides an explanation of accounting irregularities and related matters, as well as an overview of previous uses of financial analyses to determine whether such analyses are useful in the identification of irregularities in the financial statements.   The objectives of the study are as follows: <ul> <li> An investigation into the characteristics, as identified by researchers locally and abroad, that are displayed by companies with a higher risk of or occurrence of accounting irregularities.</li> <li> A survey of the media by means of a literature review to identify case study companies that had allegations of accounting irregularities against them.</li> <li> The analysis of the case study companies in a quantitative and qualitative way to determine whether the characteristics that are identified as part of the first objective hold true in practice.</li> <li> Statistical analyses of the share price data of the case study companies in the form of an event study, a regression analysis and a structural break analysis to determine when and under what circumstances significant changes happened.</li> <li> Conduct a survey involving the creators and the users of financial statements in order to observe their experience regarding the usefulness of financial statements to reveal financial health. This is done by means of questionnaires that are analysed statistically, designed to derive conclusions of what practitioners tend to experience in practice and what their feelings are regarding the use of financial statements and accounting data in an analysis of the financial health of a company.</li></ul> On the basis of the case studies, nine of 18 identified characteristics were found to be useful in the identification of accounting irregularities by parties other than managers. They are: 1. company age; 2. company culture; 3. debt levels; 4. directors’ behaviour and character; 5. financial distress; 6. industry or sector; 7. liquidity; 8. management’s behaviour and character; and 9. remuneration policies. A further eight additional characteristics were also identified as useful in the identification of accounting irregularities. They are: 1. acquisitions, mergers and other restructuring; 2. dividends; 3. opposite movements from the industry or sector; 4. period before irregularities are detected; 5. “preparing” interested parties for the annual report; 6. share price changes; 7. significant changes; and 8. tax. The results of the review of the companies’ financial information are supplemented with a statistical analysis of the companies’ share price data as well as a questionnaire that are submitted to the users and compilers of financial statements. The aim of the first statistical analysis, consisting of event studies, regression analyses and structural break analyses, is to support the findings regarding the characteristics of companies with increased risk of accounting irregularities. The questionnaire set out to relate the subjective opinions of the users and compilers of financial statements with the findings of the study. The results of the study provide proof that interested parties have the ability to use the identified company characteristics to indicate increased accounting irregularity risk. / Thesis (DCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Financial Management / unrestricted

The need for security is crucial in Telephony over IP (ToIP). Secure protocols have been designed as well as specific devices to fulfill that need. This master thesis examines one of such devices called Session Border Controller (SBC), which can be compared to reverse proxies for ToIP. The idea is to apply message filters to increase security. This thesis presents the reasons of SBC existence, based on the security weaknesse sa ToIP network can show. These reasons are then used to establish a list of features which can be expected from a SBC and discuss its ideal placement in a ToIP network architecture. A test methodology for SBCs is established and used on the free software Kamailio as an illustration. Following this test, improvements of this software, regarding threats prevention and attacks detection, are presented and implemented. / Behovet av säkerhet är av avgörande betydelse i telefoni över IP (ToIP). Säkerhetsprotokoll har utformats samt särskilda enheter för att uppfylla detta behov. Detta examensarbete undersöker en av sådana enheter som kallas Session Border Controller (SBC), vilket kan jämföras med omvända proxyservrar för ToIP. Tanken är att tillämpa meddelandefilter för att öka säkerheten. Denna avhandling presenterar orsakerna till SBC existens, baserat på de säkerhets svagheter en ToIP nätverk kan visa. Dessa skäl används sedan för att upprätta en förteckning över egenskaper som kan förväntas av en SBC och diskutera dess ideal placering i en ToIP nätverksarkitektur . En testmetodik för SBC är etablerad och används på fri programvara Kamailio som en illustration. Efter detta test, förbättringar av denna programvara, om hot förebyggande och attacker upptäcka, presenteras och genomförs.

Fraud is a threat that most online service providers must address in the development of their systems to ensure an efficient security policy and the integrity of their revenue. Amadeus, a Global Distribution System providing a transaction platform for flight booking by travel agents, is targeted by fraud attempts that could lead to revenue losses and indemnifications. The objective of this thesis is to detect fraud attempts by applying machine learning algorithms to bookings represented by Passenger Name Record history. Due to the lack of labelled data, the current study presents a benchmark of unsupervised algorithms and aggregation methods. It also describes anomaly detection techniques which can be applied to self-organizing maps and hierarchical clustering. Considering the important amount of transactions per second processed by Amadeus back-ends, we eventually highlight potential bottlenecks and alternatives.

E-commerce has become popular over the years with millions of people using this way of shopping. However e-commerce has also brought forth issues of fraud with consumers getting their identities stolen or being tricked into spending their money on products they don’t look the same in real life as on their mobile devices. There are current methods to try and prevent e- commerce fraud however the problem is still present. Consumers need to be able to identify credible websites. Studies have brought forward that there is a connection between the visuals of a website and it’s credibility. The purpose of this study is to discover how the visuals of a website affect consumers assessment of credibility. It is also the purpose to use this discovery to strengthen the credibility of e-commerce websites. A qualitative method, focus group interview, has been used to interview four females corresponding the e-commerce market’s current majority consumer. During the interview the visual content of four websites were navigated through and analysed. The results showed that for there to be credibility trust between the consumer and e-commerce website needs to be established. This is done by visually prioritizing consumer’s needs as consumers.