There are seven common methods or personas that fraudsters adopt when committing financial crimes.
The Counter Fraud Centre has identified seven personas to help you think like a fraudster. A persona is the character that is assumed by a fraudster, in line with the methods they use to commit a fraudulent act. For example, they may deceive a public official, impersonate another individual or fabricate evidence.
Knowing the methods commonly used by fraudsters is useful when planning counter fraud initiatives as it can provide additional insight into how a programme or organisation could be targeted. For example, it might be easier to pinpoint how a fabricator could exploit a business process than to ask employees to list all possible fraud risks for their business unit.
Fraudsters will often use a variety of methods from several different personas, so by understanding the range of methods used it can help to better recognise where they might target a government programme or function.
Seven common fraudster personas
To support fraud awareness and the development of fraud prevention initiatives for your organisation, explore the seven fraudster personas and the common methods they use.
Download and print a copy of the fraudster persona cards. These cards can be used as a tool for learning, table-top exercises, or around the office to raise awareness of different fraudster types.
There are several ways to use the fraudster personas to enhance your organisation’s fraud response.
Identify fraud risks
Individuals who have not been exposed to fraud can find it difficult to recognise fraud risk and pinpoint where fraud might occur. By understanding the methods of each persona, employees can better identify how a fraudster might target a business process or unit. A good method to describe a fraud risk is to consider who is committing the fraud (the actor), how they are doing it (the action) and what the result is (the outcome).
Fraudsters will often use several different personas to gain a benefit from an organisation. For example, they may lie to an employee (the deceiver), pretend to be someone else (the impersonator) or create false documentation (the fabricator).
Implement and assess countermeasures
Once you have identified fraud risks, it is important to mitigate them using countermeasures. Countermeasures can be used to prevent, detect and respond to the identified risks, and are important to help limit the opportunities for fraudsters to commit fraud.
The fraudster personas can be used to identify and implement countermeasures that specifically target the actions of a persona. Because fraudster personas display particular behaviours and use specific methods to succeed, being able to recognise them can help to identify targeted countermeasures.
Increase fraud awareness
Fraud awareness is about raising the profile of counter fraud activities in an organisation. It also encourages employees to help prevent fraud and report suspicious behaviours they might see when performing their roles.
Fraud awareness is one of the most effective tools to prevent fraud. Almost half of fraud is detected by tip-offs and more than half of those tip-offs come from employees. More than three times as many cases were detected through tip-offs than internal audit, which is the next most common detection method.
Design fraud resilient programmes
Fraudster personas are not only useful to teams directly dealing with fraud prevention, such as those working in risk or finance, but also for policy teams. The personas can be used to design fraud resilient programmes and functions by highlighting the common tactics used by fraudsters.
Using fraudster personas alongside other policy design tools, such as business process mapping and customer journey mapping, can also help to identify how and where non-compliant clients, employees or service providers might be able to undermine the policy or programme outcomes and commit fraud against an organisation.
Video about the deceiver, fabricator and impersonator
Download the full guide
Being able to recognise the fraudster personas is a useful tool for people responsible for developing, implementing and improving your organisation’s counter fraud strategy and approach. For in-depth information on the fraudster personas and how to use them, download the full guide.