Psychology of the Fraudster
Nikki Grieve-Top
Investigative Psychologist
Health Risk Management, Bupa International
7th November 2013
Psychology of the Fraudster
1. Fraudster
•
Typologies
•
Motivations
2. Fraud Handler/Detector
•
Detection difficulties
•
Objective indicators
Attitude to Fraud
• 69% of Britons would make a dishonest claim if they thought they could
get away with it
• 49% believe most people inflate the value of the claim one third or more
• 76% agreed that fraud is common in making insurance claims
• 48% would not rule out making a fraudulent insurance claim in the
future.
(ABI, 2000; 2003)
• This suggests that the main cause of fraud is policyholder attitude!
Typology
Organised
Opportunist
Repeat
Opportunistic
Opportunistic
Repeat
Organised
Organised
Motivations and consequences
£4million a week is being
made on fake claims by
criminal gangs
Rare prosecutions (but improving!)
Motivation
Historical views of ‘greedy, needy, troubled’ or ‘babes, booze and bets’.
Neutralisation
• ‘there is no victim’
• ‘they’re insured’
• ‘no one will notice’
• ‘if you’re that gullible you deserve to be conned’
• ‘it’s a legal grey area’
• ‘I’ll pay it back once the crisis is over’
• ‘I did it for my kids’
Insurance Fraud
• Not restricted to any one race, gender, profession or economic group and
may offend in other areas of the financial sector.
• Motivations of fraudsters extend beyond cost benefit analysis.
• Morals, decision making, identity and opportunity all play a part.
Duffield & Grabowski (2001)
Detection of Fraud
Meta-analysis of lie detection
• Mean accuracy rate
54%
• Experts (Police, judges, psychiatrists,
job interviewers and auditors etc)
55.5%
• Students
54.2%
• Experience and accuracy appear to have a negative correlation.
• Studies have shown that in fact new recruits do better than experienced
officers; But experienced officers were more confident (Depaulo & Pfeifer,
1986).
• Training to detect deception can decrease accuracy of detection.
– Bias judgements towards deception therefore increase false positives.
– Participants may become more confident but wrong.
(Köhnken, 1987; Kassin & Fong, 1999; Masip, Alonso, Garrido & Herrero, 2009)
Pitfalls
People tend to underestimate their ability to lie and overestimate their ability to
detect lies.
• Examining the wrong cues
• Because widespread faulty beliefs about cues to deception
Subjective Non-verbal Cues
Expressed by practitioners
• Liars are more gaze aversive
• Liars make more selfmanipulations
• Liars make more head move
movements/nods
• Liars make more arm/hand
movements
• Liars make more leg/feet
movements
• Liars fidget more
• Liars shift position more
• Liars make more body movements
in general
Subjective Non-verbal Cues
Expressed by laypersons
• Liars are more gaze aversive
• Liars shift position more often
• Liars make more leg/feet
movements.
• Liars make more illustrations
• Liars blink more often
• Liars make more selfmanipulations
• Liars have a higher-pitched voice
• Liars make more arm/hand
movements
• Liars make more speech
disturbances
• Liars take more and longer pauses
Subjective Non-verbal Cues
Expressed by laypersons
• Liars are more gaze aversive
• Liars shift position more often
• Liars make more illustrations
• Liars make more selfmanipulations
• Liars make more arm/hand
movements
• Liars make more leg/feet
movements
• Liars blink more often
• Liars have a higher-pitched voice
• Liars make more speech
disturbances
• Liars take more and longer pauses
Subjective Verbal Cues
Expressed by practitioners
• Liars are less consistent.
• Liars stories are less plausible.
• Lies contain fewer details.
• Liars speech is less fluent
Subjective Verbal Cues
Expressed by laypersons
• Lies seem less plausible.
• Lies are less consistent.
• Liars give more indirect answers.
• Liars make fewer self-references.
• Lies are less detailed.
• Lies are shorter.
• Lies contain more negative statements.
• Lies contain more irrelevant information.
Subjective Verbal Cues
Expressed by laypersons
• Lies seem less plausible.
• Lies are less consistent.
• Liars give more indirect answers.
• Liars make fewer self-references.
• Lies are less detailed.
• Lies are shorter.
• Lies contain more negative statements.
• Lies contain more irrelevant information.
Why Do These Beliefs Last?
Confirmation
Belief
Bias
Perseverance
Feedback
Illusory
Correlations
Why don't we improve?
• Lying is a fundamental part of society and social interactions
– Altruistic lies (white lies)
– Violation of social norms
(Köhnken, 1986; DePaulo & Pfeifer, 1986; Meissner &
Kassin, 2002; Bond & DePaulo, 2006)
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Objective Indicators to Detection
Meta analysis
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Objective Non-verbal cues
• Liars speak in a higher pitch.
• Liars make fewer movements with arm/finger/hands.
• Liars make fewer illustrations.
• Liars take longer pauses.
• Liars make fewer movements with legs and feet.
Objective Verbal Cues
• Liars answers are less plausible and convincing.
• Liars stories contain fewer details.
• Liars give more indirect answers.
• Liars provide shorter answers.
• Liars make fewer self references.
• Liars tell the story more chronologically correct.
• Lies contain less temporal information.
• Lies contain less spatial information.
• Lies contain perceptual information.
Conclusions
Cues are not ‘all or nothing’.
Lie cues will also be found in truthful accounts and vice versa.
Cues need to be appropriate for the context (characteristics of the situation, liar
and lie).
Benefits of training truth and deception indicators to even out bias effects and
increase open-mindedness.
However…
Highly motivated fraudsters can effectively engage in behaviours designed to
create honest impression
Liars who can adopt such countermeasures can fool even professional lie
detectors
Even trained practitioners revert back to beliefs!
Never catch 100%
Thank you. Any questions?
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