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The documentary letters of credit transaction is the most common method of payment for goods in international trade. Its use has been considered so important that it is referred to as the �lifeblood� of international commerce. The purpose of this thesis is, through analysing the present regime of documentary credit established under the The Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits, 1993 Revision (�UCP�), to identify the rights and duties of all parties in such transactions and the reasons for the frequent occurrence of fraudulent activities associated with the documents required under the credits. It identifies that the present system fails to either encourage or implement substantial realisation of �reasonable care� or �good faith� on the part of the banks, or realisation of the requirement of �good faith� from beneficiaries. As a result, the independence principle has been left without substance, with resulting huge opportunities for fraudsters to cheat on the documents and obtain payment without the need to actually perform their duties to banks and buyers. Such issues have become more acute against the background of an underlying shift in the allocation of risk between the respective parties to letters of credit. There has been a depreciation in the value of the primary document of title and security held by the issue, the bill of lading, with the advent of container shipping. As the letter of credit system is wholly dependent on the integrity of the documents, it is being undermined by these developments. This has represented a shift in the traditional scheme of risk allocation from the seller to the bank. In practice, banks have taken countermeasures by insisting that applicants provide other types of collateral, and by subjecting applicants to rigorous credit checks. Thus, applicants ultimately have had to bear the brunt of costs associated with this reallocation of risk. It will be demonstrated that the UCP does not incorporate adequate or clear enough duties to be exercised on the part of issuers toward applicants, and severely restricts the applicant�s right to sue if the issuer has wrongfully honoured. Ultimately, a balance must be struck between the desirability of protecting the applicant from the beneficiary�s fraud against the benefits gained by maintaining the letter of credit as a commercial instrument and business device. Obviously, there is public interest in protecting both of these commercial values. This thesis advocates that a mechanism in addition to the fraud exception must be introduced to safeguard the system against the ramifications of these changes � increased fraud. The thesis is structured into five chapters. Chapter 1 sets out to demonstrate the circumstances under which the respective risks are borne by each participant in the letter of credit transaction, and how developments in trade practice have caused the burden of certain of these risks among the parties to a letter of credit transaction to shift. Chapter 2, after briefly visiting the historical origins of the letter of credit and the birth of the UCP, explores the implications of the dominance of banking interests over the drafting and interpretation of the UCP, how the UCP has in practice excluded the intrusion of other sources of law and the general reluctance of courts to intervene by applying non-letter of credit principles, the implication of the UCP�s assumption of the law in practice, the resulting marginalisation of local laws, and the inequality in bargaining power between banks and applicants that precludes a choice of law other than the UCP. Chapter 3 explores the independence principle and question of documentary compliance, why the system is ridden with non-compliant documents and the lack of incentive and meaningful duty for the banks to check for �red flags� that may indicate fraud on the documents or in the transaction. It will be emphasised that documentary validity, rather than mere documentary compliance, should be the focus under the letter of credit. Chapter 4 examines the fraud exception to the independence principle, the typical high thresholds of proof that applicants had to overcome to estopp payment, and explores recent trends towards the gradual lowering of such thresholds. Finally, Chapter 5 considers practical measures and proposals for reform that would help to redress the imbalance in the allocation of risk identified in the thesis.

Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka pengarnas möjliga negativa påverkan på studenter och hur studenter resonerar om pengarnas värde i vardagen. Empiriskt behandlar uppsatsen varför studenter skulle kunna försöka lura den statliga myndigheten Centrala studiestödsnämnden (CSN) på låne- och studiebidrag. Två fokusgruppsintervjuer har gjorts för att samla in material. Intervjuerna har kodats enligt grounded theory-metoden. Resultaten visar att pengar har en stor inverkan på informanterna – både på ett negativt och positivt sätt. Studenternas beslut ifall de skulle kunna tänka sig att lura CSN beror på ens egna omständigheter och vilka kan påverka deras moraliska principer. / This study aims to investigate the possibility of a negative impact of money on students, and how they reason in relation to the value of money in everyday life. Empirically, the purpose deals with interviews concerning why students might defraud the government authority the Central Study Aid Council (CSN) in loans and grants for their own profit. Two qualitative focusgroup interviews were conducted to collect materials. These have been encoded according to grounded theory method. The results show that money has a huge impact on the informants – both in a negative and positive way. Students' decision to deceive CSN depends on their own circumstances and thereby changed their moral principles.

This study examines the relationship between executives and their independent auditor to see if there is a conflict of interest in their interaction. This study was motivated by the meltdowns, partially caused by fraudulent accounting, of many public companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the consequent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This study examines the variables of audit fees, fees for other services, and auditor tenure to see if they are connected with the occurrence of an SEC-prompted restatement. The results show no significant correlation between amount of fees and the likelihood of an SEC-prompted restatement but indicate a negative correlation between length of executive-auditor relationship and the occurrence of an SEC-prompted restatement.

A survey indicates that the number of fraud-related crimes has been increasing considerably throughout the country. In addition, the number of online shopping fraud has been becoming much more than before since 2005. Up to 2009, the number of crimes associated with online shopping fraud has increased to roughly 7114 cases, leading to the percentage as 18.08% of all the fraud-related crimes. Even though the number of fraud-related crimes has been decreasing for the past-three-year period from 2006 to 2009, the crime number of online shopping fraud has been increasing gradually instead. Because the situation of Internet-based swindle is becoming progressively worse, such a fraud-related crime is worth much more attention from authorities concerned and much more effective measures taken by administrators so as to alleviate the number of online swindling crimes. Consumers throughout the country are getting used to make purchases by means of the application of Internet, which has made it possible for consumers to be trapped in online shopping fraud in such a tremendous electronic market. In addition, not only is the generation of online shopping fraud associated with the whole situation, but it is also related to online shoppers and individual traits. Consumer¡¦s involvement in Internet is of great significance to all the factors resulting in online shopping fraud. Based on the Involvement Figure developed by Zaichko wsky in 1985, this study aims to measure Internet-based consumer behavior, to examine the correlation between Consumer¡¦s Involvement in Internet and Purchasing Behavior, and to observe the result of online shopping fraud. This study adopts the participants consisting of the victims suffering from fraud-related crimes in Kaohsiung County, and collects the data by means of the distribution of 310 questionnaires, of which the number of valid questionnaire is up to 260. In addition, this study utilizes SPSS 12.0 to proceed data analysis. Results released by this study indicate as below: 1. In terms of the dimension, Internet Involvement, applied in the questionnaire, consumers recruited in this study belong to medium-degree and high-degree groups. The highest of each dimension is the rationality of Internet. Individual¡¦s internet involvement is obviously correlated to his or her age, education background, occupation and the recognition to 165 fraud-prevention hotline. 2. In terms of the dimension, Purchasing Search, applied in the questionnaire, individuals hired in this study belong to the medium-degree and high-degree groups. The highest of each dimension is the application of purchase. Consumer¡¦s purchasing search is prominently correlated to his or her age, education background, occupation and the recognition to 165 fraud-prevention hotline. 3. Consumer¡¦s Internet Involvement and each dimension are correlated to each other, and so are Purchasing Search and each dimension. Internet Involvement is correlated to consumer¡¦s Purchasing Search in a positive way. 4. In accordance with the above conclusions blended with online shopping fraud survey and researcher¡¦s practical experiences, this study has made it available to submit suggestions in four different aspects including the government organizations, the private corporations, individual tendency to Internet, further researches.

More .crimes of fraud make more . people who receive the messages lose money and felt great fear, which is a huge damage to Taiwan. There are many kind of fraud, included telemarketing fraud, lottery fraud and Automated Teller Machine fraud, etc. Message receivers are not understand the difference is between truth and fraud, and many message receivers reject all the messages they receive than believing racketeers and lose their money and time. There are many common cases of fraud, and related analysis is included in the study. There are four keypoints why message receivers were victims after asking for experts¡¦ opinions, including extra-environmental factors, forms of fraud, message receivers who do not have enough knowledge about fraud and message receivers¡¦ personal factors. Finally, the study designed a questionnaire to investigate what cognition, experience and attitude subjects had. The population of study is the citizens in Kaohsiung. The research uses the elaboration likelihood model as the research method and the situation stimulated to design the questionnaire. The research result is shown as following: the difference between receptions of subjects in the case of common fraud and the case of non-common fraud is significant, and the personal factors gender, age, education level and monthly homehold income level significant to receptions of the subjects.

The fraud of financial transfer has become a new type crime and been used with various types. And it is also a rare phenomenon in overseas .According to the statistics of National Police Agency, there were 146,931 cases totally and 48,259 cases cleared , the clearance rate is 32.84 % . It is obvious that such kind of crime has caused the loss of social cost and damaged to people¡¦s daily life. Moreover, offenders use human beings¡¦ greed for money to achieve their purposes. In addition, they also use the ways of calls and messages of cellar phones. In past four years, categorizing the number of fraud cases handled by Police Departments in area of Taiwan & Fukain Province, 45,357 cases were conducted by the process of calling and messages of mobile phones, only 11,613 cases cleared, the clearance rate is 25.6%, 101,574 cases were conducted by the rest of ways; only 36,646 cases were cleared; the clearance rate is 36.07 %. From statistics mentioned above, the development of hi-tech not only brings about the convenience of life but also leads to diversified skills of the crimes. All in all, it has already leveled the difficulties of enforcement and lowered the clearance rate as well. In response of this phenomenon, Executive Yuan set up an Anti-fraud Platform on April 23, 2004 to coordinate with the relevant stakeholders, but the effectiveness was still limited. It is no exaggeration to say that the fraud rings have caused people¡¦s anxiety and messed the social order up. Firstly, this paper focuses on conceptual framework of administrative law¡¦s theories, organization, competence, appeal and supervision. Secondly, it moves to understand the extent of integrity between anti-fraud laws and relevant administrative laws. Next, it aims to investigate the current phenomenon of cooperation among relevant authorities, private sectors and telecom sectors. Last, it proposes suggestions for improvement.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop an understanding about internal fraud and corruption problem in Turkish construction industry. During the research, the reasons behind the internal fraud and corruption problem, types of internal fraud and prevention methods for internal fraud and corruption were investigated and various recommendations were developed. Moreover, fraud risk awareness questionnaire was implemented to understand the likelihood occurrence of internal fraud types in construction sector and proactive and reactive measures against these problems. Moreover, types of fraud incidences experienced by Turkish construction companies were also investigated with the questionnaire. The questionnaire reached to 89 respondents and, recommendations to prevent internal fraud and corruption problem were developed by detailed statistical analyses.

With the intensive need for health insurances, health care service providers¡¦ fraud and abuse have become a serious problem. The practices, such as billing services that were never rendered, performing medically unnecessary services, and misrepresenting non-covered treatments as medically necessary covered treatments, etc, not only contribute to the problem of rising health care expenditure but also affect the health of patients. We are therefore motivated to investigate the detection of service providers¡¦ fraudulent and abusive behavior. In this research, we introduce the concept of clinical pathways and thereby propose a framework that facilitates automatic and systematic construction of adaptable and extensible detection systems. For the purposes of building such detection systems, we study the problems of mining frequent patterns from clinical instances, selecting features that have more discriminating power and revising detection model to have higher accuracy with less labeled instances. The performance of the proposed approaches has been evaluated objectively by synthetic data set and real-world data set. Using the real-world data set gathered from the National Health Insurance (NHI) program in Taiwan, the experiments show that our detection model has fairly good prediction power. Comparing to traditional expense driven approach, more importantly, our detection model tends to capture different fraudulent scenarios.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 70 pages. / Thesis (MA)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: This thesis is an investigation of identity theft, although not a new crime it has recently attracted public concern. This concern has led to both federal and state governments to establish new laws to provide increased protection. Government agencies and the media have warned the public that an individual's social security number and other personal information are the tools that unscrupulous criminals can use to gain access to an identity. Once your identity is assumed criminals can use that new identity to obtain goods and services freely available in this world of instant credit lines. The purpose of this study is to examine the magnitude and characteristics of identity theft. The objective is to determine if government official's claims and the media's portrayal of the substantial rise in identity theft incidents are supported empirically. / ABSTRACT: The data for this study comes from police records located in one southern-metropolitan city; from this two separate data sets were drawn. A case study methodology was selected for this project. The results indicate that the identity theft trend is different than the trends for other theft related offenses -- credit card fraud, check fraud, robbery and motor vehicle theft. The data suggest that identity theft is increasing more rapidly than the other theft orientated offenses. However, future research should be conducted to help determine if the trend found in this study is a more a reflection of criminal behavior then of changes in reporting. Additionally, the available literature on identity theft suggested that attaining an arrest for identity theft is especially difficult. The empirical evidence found in this study is mixed on this point. / ABSTRACT: Finally, the demographic characteristics of identity thieves in the area of study do not conform to other economically motivated offenders. African American female offenders make up a significantly large proportion of offenders. Determining the cause of these patterns would at this point be premature, but the existence of patterns warrants further research. In conclusion, this study finds support for the expressed belief by media, private organizations, and government officials that there is greater reporting and recoding of identity theft. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.