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The Dark Figure and the Cyber Fraud Rise in Europe: Evidence from Spain

  • S.I. Fraud in the XXI Century
  • Published:
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A reduction in property crime has been a central feature of criminological discussion in the last 25 years, and numerous studies have used police statistics to identify a drop throughout the Western world. However, fraud, which is included in a broad definition of property crime, has typically not been considered in the analysis. This study examines fraud in the Spanish and European context to further understanding of its nature, prevalence, evolution and role in the overall panorama of property crime. Furthermore, the present study explores the extent to which we are experiencing widespread fraud underreporting to police and the implications of this for crime control policy. To this end, the present paper analyses secondary data provided by the Spanish Ministry of Interior, Spanish and European central banking authorities as well as large-scale victimization surveys from a number of European countries. In contrast to other property crimes, the findings indicate that cyber fraud is rising and that reporting is considerably lower. Some of the main reasons for reporting or not reporting fraud victimization are also identified. The dark figure of fraud suggests the design and evaluation of policing and crime prevention policies based solely on police statistics may be inadequate.

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Notes

  1. Identity fraud is called identity theft but the definition is the same.

  2. All data transformation and visualization have been executed using the tidyverse R package version 1.3.0 (Wickham et al. 2019) in RStudio version 1.2.5033 for the R free software version 3.6.2.

  3. Retrieved from http://www.interior.gob.es/prensa/noticias/-/asset_publisher/GHU8Ap6ztgsg/content/id/6222655

  4. Available from: https://www.bde.es/bde/es/secciones/informes/Publicaciones_an/Memoria_anual_so/index2016.html

  5. The police in Spain is not made up of one homogenous body but rather several different forces: the National Police, Civil Guard, Local Police as well as the police forces that correspond to the autonomous communities of Catalonia, Basque Country and Navarra.

  6. Special Eurobarometer 480

  7. Based on the Spanish adult population of 39 million on 1 January 2017

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Law. Facultat de Dret, University of Girona, C/ Universitat de Girona, 12, 17003, Girona, Spain

    Steven Kemp

  2. CRÍMINA Research Centre for the study and prevention of crime, University Miguel Hernández, Avda. de la Universidad s/n. Edif. Hélike, 03201, Elche, Spain

    Fernando Miró-Llinares & Asier Moneva

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  1. Steven Kemp
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  2. Fernando Miró-Llinares
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  3. Asier Moneva
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Correspondence to Steven Kemp.

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Kemp, S., Miró-Llinares, F. & Moneva, A. The Dark Figure and the Cyber Fraud Rise in Europe: Evidence from Spain. Eur J Crim Policy Res 26, 293–312 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-020-09439-2

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