Most research into financial fraud relies on victims to recall and report their own experiences, but it is difficult to know whether self-reporting offers a reliable account of these crimes. For a different perspective on the harms caused by fraud, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded researchers at RTI International to analyze data from the other side of scams — the scammers’ own digital records about their victims. Seized by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the four scammer databases studied include information on more than 1.3 million victims across nearly two decades, enabling “the largest analysis of repeat mass marketing fraud victimization to date.” There has been inconsistent evidence about whether financial fraud has an outsize impact on one particularly vulnerable group: older adults. The NIJ-funded study of scammers’ own data offers a definitive conclusion: Compared to younger victims, older victims suffered more incidents of mail fraud and lost higher amounts of money.
Insights Into Mail Fraud Come From Scammers’ Own Records
NCJ Number
309977
Date Published
January 2025
Abstract
Date Published: January 1, 2025