Fraud, in the widest sense of ‘deception for gain’ is as old as human society. Nor is there anything new and unexpected about the way new technologies empower the fraudster along with the rest of us. It happened with money and the earliest financial products, then the telegraph, the railway and the telephone, all long before the internet dismantled our fraud defences. So why are we still so bad at seeing fraud coming and trying to design it out of our great innovations? That is the question at the heart of this special report. It’s not an easy question to answer but it is time for all of us – in business, politics and wider society – to ask it with the utmost seriousness.

Open publication