Fraud and Forensic Accounting Investigation

Fraud and Forensic Evidence

Fraud to Trial Process

The case study presents a very interesting criminal act, the use of re-directing payers to a mock PayPal, an online payment processing company, where the criminals were then able to capture the PayPal username and their corresponding passwords to access their PayPal accounts. This unusual activity was noticed by a PayPal fraud investigator who noticed there were several accounts that were being opened under the same last names. To that end, after one of the merchants reported being directed to the mock PayPal site, the fraud investigator looked into a report from a PayPal merchant. The initial gathering of e-evidence was by the fraud investigator who used two freeware network-discovery tools that were able to trace the accounts in question to a specific IP address. At this time, they also found a connection to a fake PayPal server address and a shipping address in Russia. Suspicions were confirmed when the PayPal fraud team helped the FBI by using an e-forensic tool kit and found the program on the suspects hard drives, as well as established links between the IP address of the computer, credit cards, and the Perl scripts that were used to open the accounts.

This case study presents a myriad of the legal elements of fraud, and through the exploration of the elements it will build a comprehensive case against the victims. Foremost, the element of fraud which is embodied in the statement "a material false statement" or misrepresentation is something present in this particular case study (INSERT TEXT CITATION). Here, the perpetrator deceived their victims into think that they were going to the real PayPal site, when in fact they were being re-routed to one that the perpetrator would gain their login information. This is applicable in court because there is proof that the criminal concealed facts in order to deceive another party, in which case there were clear intentions and gains in misrepresenting. Furthermore, the perpetrator knew that the representation of the PayPal site was false, which was intended to "provoke or lead to an action by the victim," in this case logging in so that account information would be exposed (INSERT TEXT CITATION). This was a deliberate misrepresentation of the website, and was a "mirror image" to ensure that victims could not find the difference and be fooled into thinking they were providing their information to a secure site. This was a deliberate misrepresentation and thus, can be counted as fraud.