Holtfreter and Reisig present at national fraud conference

Professors Kristi Holtfreter and Michael Reisig will speak at a Washington D.C. conference this week sponsored by the Financial Fraud Research Center based at Stanford University. “The True Impact of Fraud: A Roundtable of Experts” brings together researchers and practitioners to discuss the cost and impact of financial fraud.

”It’s sort of a State of the Union on what do we need to know about fraud research and where do we really need to come together collectively to solve the problem,” Holtfreter says. “Unfortunately, current estimates of fraud’s impact and prevalence vary widely, making it difficult for law enforcement, researchers, and policymakers to appreciate the true scope of the problem.”

Holtfreter and Reisig are the authors of a recent fraud study funded by the National Institute of Justice: “Financial Exploitation of the Elderly in a Consumer Context.” The study involved telephone interviews with 1,000 people age 60 or over in Arizona and 1,000 in Florida. Holtfreter and Reisig found that six of every 10 seniors surveyed had been targeted for fraud in the prior year. But, most seniors didn’t fall for whatever schemes or scams that targeted them. Only 14 percent of reported that they were victims of consumer fraud. And when it came to education campaigns aimed at seniors, most of those surveyed were unfamiliar with programs in Arizona and Florida designed to assist elderly victims of fraud.

Holtfreter and Reisig will join others from academia, law enforcement and nonprofits for the two-day conference.  Presentations will focus on the degree of fraud committed, those behind it and the impact fraud has on individuals, businesses and organizations. Holtfreter says one of the main goals is to reach agreement on best practices in determining the prevalence of fraud in the United States.

 “The focus of this conference is to come to some kind of consensus on defining fraud, measuring fraud, getting on the same page—at least in a scholarly sense—so that we can say what we need to do to respond to it on the policy side,” says Holtfreter.

The Financial Fraud Research Center is a joint project of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation. Based in Palo Alta, California, the Stanford Center on Longevity looks for innovative ways to utilize science and technology to help solve the problems of people over 50. The goal of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, based in Washington D.C. is to provide Americans with the knowledge, skills and tools to become financially literate.