It is strongly believed that fraudsters are most active in times of downturns and crises leading us to the conclusion that amid the global pandemic there is much to fear besides the virus. With Black Friday and Christmas around the corner and with all shops being closed due to lockdown surely most of us are searching for deals and sales online which may seem harmless at first but can be actually quite dangerous. With consumer spending shifting online, scammers adapt and develop new techniques and tricks to get a hold of our data (bank information, personal details). Many of this tricks consist of promoting sales of seasonal items, products of high demand like for example lets say you want to gift your child a new phone for the upcoming holidays so of course, you search for the best deal you can find on the internet and you find the phone your child wants with the price being slashed to your liking so you think to yourself I'm going to save a lot of money of this purchase and without hesitation, you click to check out. Yes you may receive a perfectly normal package, but there is also the possibility that you have received a cheap knock off or in a lot of cases of fraudulent payments - you have received nothing at all. That is because there are a lot of fake advertisements created by criminals - what they gain from this is your money and possibly your bank information or even your personal information which could later be used for fraud.

By reading articles on The Telegraph and Financial Times we get to the conclusion that compared to other years - 2020 has the highest percentage of growth when it comes to fraud. With fraud rate 385 per cent higher than in the same period last year (Financial Times) and the average victim of purchase fraud losing 720 in the first half of the year (The Telegraph) - it is certain that scammers will continue using Covid-19's inconvenience to consumers to their advantage and that by the end of the year the percentage of fraud will grow significantly.

1. Analyse the fraud that you have described in terms of the fraud triangle. You should evaluate whether the extended fraud triangle model accurately describes what has happened in the fraud that you described. You should identify whether there are any elements of the fraud that the model did not fully explain and offer suggestions for refinements to the fraud triangle model.