Fraud hurts individual; requires responsibility
Mesa Legend
Scams and fraud are an ongoing issue that Americans are confronted with every day. Modern fraud, no longer the purview of snake oil salesmen, is often initiated digitally, leading to identity theft among other crimes. Identity theft and identity fraud include any crime where personal data is used to deceive, and is often financially motivated.
According to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2013, identity theft was the top complaint that year with 290,056 total complaints which comprised 14 percent of all complaints filed with the FTC. Once fraudulent personal data has been obtained, it is often used to apply for government documents, as well as benefits meant for the individual being impersonated.
In Arizona, government document and benefit fraud was the most prevalent form of identity theft reported to the FTC in 2013, comprising 24 percent of the totality. The study revealed that complaints filed by Arizona victims of crimes classified as related to identity theft totaled at 6,043. Whenever someone is victimized by identity theft, the effects are widespread, and not limited to that person alone.
“When you think about the way that exchange works best, most economists would think that the more exchange, the more transactions you have, the more trade you have, the better off your society is,” said MCC economics professor Greg Pratt. Pratt said that, as a result, economic institutions emerge and develop to support trade. “To the extent that you can facilitate and encourage trade, in general, societies are better off and most everybody is better off,” Pratt said. “The problem comes when you get frictions in trade.”
Pratt gave an example; if two parties were engaged in a trade, and an uninvited third party trespasses on the interaction, they can have the effect of dampening the trade. “Those types of interferences are frictions,” Pratt said. To prevent such friction, Pratt suggested taking preventative measures like shutting a door so that the particulars of the trade cannot be overheard. “It may seem insignificant, but there is a cost involved in that,” Pratt said. “And there is this notion now that we are more clandestine in our exchange. So there are lots of costs and lots of benefits that are associated with
