Part A: The workshop
Current fraud and corruption trends
Key takeaways
- Digital and cyber-enabled fraud (phishing, business email compromise and ransomware) exploits both technical weaknesses and human trust.
- Mobile money and payment system fraud, such as SIM-swap fraud, agent collusion and instant-payment schemes, is especially significant in Kenya's mobile-money-driven economy.
- Remote work widens opportunity, cross-border schemes strain domestic investigative and legal tools, cryptocurrency offers new ways to conceal proceeds outside banking channels, and AI-enabled deception powers impersonation.
- Technology changes the delivery mechanism of a scheme far more often than its legal or accounting character: a business email compromise is still fraudulent misrepresentation executed by new means.
- Connect every trend back to the fraud triangle by asking what new pressure, opportunity or rationalisation it introduces, and illustrate it with a recent, real case.
This closing paper is structured as a practical workshop rather than a lecture syllabus, and has no further numbered breakdown in the source. This first topic consolidates the emerging-trend material scattered through earlier subjects (current and emerging schemes in Fraud and Corruption Schemes, the legal and justice challenges in Law Related to Fraud) into one forward-looking picture examiners expect a qualifying forensic examiner to hold, and workshop participants are expected to discuss and update against real, current cases.
- Trends should be discussed against industry bodies' (e.g. ACFE) published fraud surveys, which track shifting scheme prevalence over time
- A recurring workshop theme is that technology changes the delivery mechanism of a scheme far more often than it changes its underlying legal or accounting character, a business email compromise is still, legally, fraudulent misrepresentation (covered in Law Related to Fraud, under misrepresentation) executed by new means
- Emerging trends should be connected back to the fraud triangle (covered in Fraud Prevention and Detection, under why fraud occurs), asking what new pressures, opportunities or rationalisations the trend introduces
Exam tip
This topic rewards currency, in the workshop and exam alike, be ready to discuss at least one recent, real fraud or corruption case (local or international) illustrating each major trend above, generic description without a concrete example scores lower in a workshop-style assessment.
Self-check
(a) Explain why the workshop theme 'technology changes the delivery mechanism far more often than the underlying legal character' matters for how an examiner should analyse an AI-enabled deception scheme. (5 marks)
(b) Distinguish between digital and cyber-enabled fraud and mobile money and payment system fraud, and explain why the latter is described as especially significant in Kenya specifically. (4 marks)
(c) Connect the 'remote work and reduced oversight' trend back to the fraud triangle, explaining what specifically has changed. (4 marks)
(d) Explain why cryptocurrency and digital assets are identified as a distinct emerging trend rather than simply a variant of existing money laundering methods. (3 marks)
Show worked answer
(a) Recognising that technology changes delivery far more than legal character means an examiner analysing a deepfake-based impersonation scheme should first ask what the underlying scheme actually is in legal and accounting terms (a fraudulent misrepresentation inducing a payment or disclosure, for example), and only then note that AI-generated audio or video is simply this session's new delivery mechanism. Treating the technology itself as the analytical starting point, rather than the underlying scheme it is delivering, risks missing that the applicable legal principles and investigative approach are largely the same as for any impersonation-based fraud, just executed through a new medium. (5 marks)
(b) Digital and cyber-enabled fraud covers phishing, business email compromise and ransomware, exploiting technical weaknesses and human trust generally, across any digital channel. Mobile money and payment system fraud is narrower, covering SIM-swap fraud, agent collusion and instant-payment schemes specifically tied to mobile-money infrastructure. It is especially significant in Kenya because Kenya's economy is unusually mobile-money-driven relative to many other markets, a large share of everyday transactions flow through mobile money rails, giving this specific fraud category disproportionate real-world impact and prevalence compared to markets where mobile money is a smaller part of the payment landscape. (4 marks)
(c) The fraud triangle's opportunity element is directly affected: distributed teams and reduced in-person supervision mean fewer eyes are directly observing day-to-day activity, weakening the informal, ambient oversight that in-person work provides alongside formal controls. This widens opportunity for both occupational schemes (an individual acting alone, less likely to be casually observed) and collusive schemes (coordination between colleagues is harder to notice when it does not require being physically visible to others in a shared workspace). (4 marks)
(d) Cryptocurrency and digital assets are distinct because they operate largely outside traditional banking channels and their regulatory and tracing infrastructure, existing anti-money-laundering tools built around bank transaction monitoring and correspondent banking relationships do not map directly onto blockchain-based transfers, pseudonymous wallets, and decentralised exchanges, requiring genuinely new tracing techniques and, in many jurisdictions, still-developing regulatory and legal frameworks specifically adapted to this asset class, rather than simply applying existing money-laundering methodology unchanged. (3 marks)