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Since to trace and examine all of the insurance companies that were involved in scandal and fraud would be far too extensive a task for this study, seven companies have been chosen for examination because they best illustrate the consequences of weak insurance regulation in Texas. In studying each company major emphasis has been given to the factors which contributed directly to the eventual receivership of the company.

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2010

Dans cette thèse nous nous intéressons à la question de l’accès aux soins des étrangers en situation irrégulière à travers l’étude de l’attribution de l’aide médicale d’Etat (AME), une couverture maladie qui leur est réservée. A partir d’une enquête ethnographique menée des deux côtés du guichet des caisses primaires d’Assurance maladie (CPAM), nous interrogeons les effets du développement d’une conception gestionnaire de la santé et des mutations du travail dans les CPAM sur l’attribution de l’AME. Nous montrons qu’une rhétorique du soupçon se développe dans cette administration, et ce plus particulièrement à l’égard des étrangers. Bien que cette rhétorique soit institutionnalisée, nous verrons qu’elle donne aussi lieu à des réappropriations individuelles, dans un contexte de forte remise en question du sens du travail et de déstabilisation des identités professionnelles. Nous verrons que si l’ensemble des agents partagent ce discours sur la lutte contre la fraude sociale, ils usent néanmoins de cette logique de diverses façons. Cette dernière peut ainsi leur permettre de valoriser un savoir-faire gestionnaire, un savoir-faire social, ou encore un savoir-faire de gardien du système. Enfin, la thèse montre que l’usage de la rhétorique du soupçon n’engendre pas forcément une lecture rigoriste de l’AME, même si cette dernière reste dominante. Elle peut au contraire, quand elle permet de mobiliser un sens social ou gestionnaire, du fait de la spécificité de l’AME et de son traitement à l’écart, s’avérer aussi faciliter l’accès aux soins des étrangers en situation irrégulière. / In this dissertation, we address the issue of healthcare access for undocumented immigrants through the study of State Medical Aid (referred to as AME – Aide Médicale d’Etat) – a healthcare coverage specifically dedicated to them. Based on an ethnographic study carried out on both sides of the counter at Health Insurance Offices (referred to as CPAM - caisses primaires d’Assurance maladie), we question the impact of an increasingly managerial approach to healthcare and of CPAM occupational mutations on AME attribution. We show how a rhetoric of suspicion developed in this administration, towards foreigners in particular. Event though this rhetoric is institutionalized, we shall see how it can also be individually reappropriated, in a context where the meaning of labor is strongly called into question, and where professional identities are undermined. While all agents share a common discourse on the fight against social fraud, they nevertheless use this logic in different ways. As a result, agents may distinctively promote a managerial expertise, a social expertise, or a system gatekeeper expertise. Finally, this dissertation shows how the use of a suspicion rhetoric does not necessarily produce a rigorist reading of AME, even if the latter dominates. On the contrary, it may also call on a social or managerial perspective – given the specificity of AME and its separate processing – that may facilitate healthcare access for undocumented immigrants.

<p>This thesis investigates fraud and the situation on Internet with e-commerce today, to point on some potential threats and needed countermeasures. The work reviews several state of the art e-fraud schemes, techniques used in the schemes and statistics on the extent of e-fraud. This part shows that e-frauds are today both sophisticated and widespread. </p><p>Since real world frauds are deemed impossible to fully cover in order to predict potential new e-frauds, the thesis adopts a different approach. It suggests two abstraction models for fraud cases, a protocol model and a functional model. These are used to perform analysis on case studies on both telecom frauds and e-frauds. The analysis presents characteristics for both types of frauds. Using one of the abstraction models, the functional model, conceptually similar cases among telecom frauds as well as e-fraud cases are identified. The similar cases in each category are then compared, using the other abstraction model, the protocol model. The study shows that concepts from telecom frauds already exist in e-frauds. </p><p>Several challenges and some possibilities in e-fraud prevention and detection are also extracted in the comparative study of the different categories. The major consequence of the challenges is e-frauds’ higher scalability compared to telecom frauds. </p><p>Finally, this thesis covers several existing countermeasures in e-commerce along with specific countermeasures against auction fraud, phishing and spam. However, it is shown that these countermeasures do not address the challenges in e-fraud prevention and detection to a satisfactory extent. Therefore, this thesis proposes several high-level countermeasures in order to address the challenges.</p>

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

This thesis concerns the collapse of Houston based Enron Corporation and its ongoing economic, political and legal implications. Specifically, I investigate spaces of corporate fraud to broadly ask, how is fraud located in the varied spatial contexts of the firm? My goal is to demonstrate that the corporation is contingent upon social, cultural and material relationships across space. In this regard, I explore three distinct corporate spaces. They include (1) financial statements, where I discuss Enron’s financial performances in two spatial contexts, what the public saw, and what went on in private, (2) the bodies of workers, where I consider the gendered exposure of Enron’s fraud to the public, and (3) the spaces of the courtroom where I document how the corporation, as a non-bodied entity, became embodied in a courtroom context. In each case, I demonstrate how fraud is situated differently, and in each case, I suggest the implications of corporate fraud play out with differing results for those involved. The research for this thesis involved an archeological and ethnographic approach towards gathering and analyzing narratives around Enron’s downfall. This means I rely on financial documents and other important papers published by the former company, semi-structured interviews with former Enron employees, interviews with key media persons documenting the Enron story, participant-observation of the criminal trial against former CEOs (Chief Executive Officer) Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, media analysis of news articles and other popular culture texts, and finally, journaling. Far from being solely a homo economicus, a rational economic actor guided by capitalist imperatives to extract profit, my data suggests that the corporation is constituted through cultural, social and material agents that are unstable and breakdown. With this, I suggest the use of a new metaphor for the corporation, the corporation as a body. The body I conceive is conceptually drawn from feminist post-structural theory. It is open, porous and embodied. This new metaphor enables me to draw on the corporation’s diverse embodiments as important constitutive moments of corporate fraud.

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abstract / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy