Rise in cybercrime could lead to false accusations

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2011 at 4:23 pm

A recent report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggests that cybercrime is now considered to rest in the higher echelons of the serious fraud spectrum. Contained within the survey is the startling statistic that a quarter of victims of economic crime report a cyber element to it.

According to PwC, the associated impacts of cybercrime can be more widely felt than the simple defrauding of an individual or organisation. Commercial consequences include reputational and brand damage, poor employee morale and service disruption.

The report also revealed that businesses are now more wary of threats coming from internal sources as well as external – more than a third of cases involved employees being responsible for a serious fraud that targeted their own company.

83% of respondents to the survey stated that reputational damage was the biggest fear they held in connection to cybercrime. However, it’s worth noting that the combination of heightened awareness within businesses and this supreme concern over brand image could have negative consequences.

Concerns have been raised before over the nature of a blame culture wherein tangible scapegoats are deemed a necessity in the event of a brand or business suffering some sort of image problem. If this need for a visible fall guy leads to a surge of accusations of corporate fraud, then the Serious Fraud Office should be wary of the possibility that many of those could be falsely construed.

If you have been accused of corporate fraud, we can help. David Phillips & Partners have over 25 years of experience and specialise in providing expert defence in fraud cases of all types, including tax fraud, VAT fraud and white collar fraud.