Australia Yearbook - 2001

492 Year Book Australia 2001
“By the year 2000”, they said, “we will have a safer
and more secure community. The focus will be
on
A partnership approach to policing
An increase in community confidence in police
A reduction in the incidence, effects and fear of
crime
An increased level of community safety”.
Who knows what vision they will set for the end
of this century?
Fraud
While fraud is an old crime, technological, social,
demographic and economic developments have
brought about changes in the form fraud takes
and how it is perpetrated. In simple terms, fraud
involves the use of dishonest or deceitful conduct
in order to obtain some unjust advantage over
another (Smith and Grabosky 1998).
Fraud is often regarded as a modern day crime,
but it has been around for a very long time.
Plotting the trend of the extent of fraud over this
century is not a useful exercise, as many frauds
are not recorded, and any attempt to suggest that
the number of frauds per 100,000 population has
risen or fallen is based on shaky data.
Some attribute the beginnings of fraud to the
Industrial Revolution, but there seems to be little
reason for thinking that it was not around before
then, as any sort of trade or dealings between
people seems to offer the opportunity to commit
fraud.
In the early days of colonial Australia, the
shortage of currency and the resultant use of
promissory notes, sometimes thousands of
pounds worth, gave opportunity for fraud. Other
simpler cases include one Emily Syster, who was a
‘begging letter imposter’ some time in the early
1840s. She wrote to various prominent figures,
including the Bishop, under different guises—as
an old officer, a pregnant woman, a ruined
tradesman. The fraud was eventually detected
through her handwriting. Other examples include
false insurance claims, such as claiming for the
theft of four watches when in fact only two were
stolen (Smith and Grabosky 1998).
In the early days of settlement in Australia, fraud
was facilitated by communication methods as it is
today—only in those days it was its slowness
rather than the electronic rapidity of today.
When one Benjamin Boyd borrowed money
in England ostensibly to establish the Royal
Bank of Australia in 1839, it was very difficult
for his creditors to keep track of how their
money was being used. Boyd must have been
quite a persuasive person as he was
permitted by the other directors of the Royal
Bank to set off for Australia with the money
that had been invested in the bank, and was
granted a loan for his own use. Very little of
the money was in fact used in banking
operations. Boyd spent most of the money
on establishing a shipping business, investing
in whaling works, the setting up of a wool
washing dam on Sydney Harbour and the
building of Boyd Town on the southern coast
of New South Wales. Apart from being able to
conceal his business failures through false
reports, Boyd’s fraudulent activities were
assisted by the length of time it took for
communication to take place between one
side of the world and the other (Sykes 1988).
By the end of the twentieth century,
expanding computer literacy has increased
the number of prospective fraud offenders,
while new technologies allow easier and
cheaper access to a much larger pool of
prospective victims. At the end of the
century, in addition to old fashioned scams
we have seen evidence of Identity-related
Fraud, Internet Fraud, Credit Card Fraud,
Advance Fee Fraud, and Nursing Home
Fraud, to mention just a few types.
These few types provide an indication of the
range and complexity of dishonesty offences
that come to the attention of the police in
Australia. There are, of course, many others
that are either not discovered or not
reported. These cases also show that fraud is
invariably complex, and not possible to be
described in detail here.
However, many fraud types involve an
international element, and rely upon modern
technologies for their commission. The
proliferation of electronic funds transfer
systems has enhanced the risk that such
transactions will be intercepted and funds
diverted. Most of the large scale electronic
funds transfer frauds which have been
committed have involved the interception or
alteration of electronic data messages
transmitted from bank computers.