50 Fraud Quotes to Avoid Being a Victim

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published July 28, 2023

Fraud Quotes About Overcoming Deception

Improve your defenses with our fraud quotes.

Fraud is a scary word that puts fear into the strongest people.

But who are the communities who are impacted by fraud the most?

The answer may surprise you.

What is fraud?

Fraud comes in various forms.

At its basic level, fraud is any activity relying on deception to gain.

Fraud is not a crime until someone knowingly lies to deprive some of money or property.

However, in most cases, fraud occurs when someone intentionally misrepresents the truth or withholds vital information, which results in harm or financial loss to another.

The Federal Trade Commission tracks data in its annual fraud report.

Check out these fraud facts below from the Federal Trade Commission:

1 in 5 people in the US has experience identity theft.
Time fraud is one of the most common forms of fraud.
49% of all reports to the FTC were fraud, and 25% were identity theft.

Why do people commit fraud?

People commit fraud for various reasons.

Dr. Donald Cressey, a criminologist, developed something called the fraud triangle.

The fraud triangle outlines the three conditions that lead to fraud: motivation, opportunity, and rationalization.

The triangle suggests that the likelihood of fraud increases exponentially if the three conditions are present.

Unshareable financial needs, perceived opportunities, and rationalization result in people committing fraud.

When fraudsters are interviewed after being caught, they share similar motivations for their actions.

Human nature is fascinating; we find that as people move up in position or status in a job or career, their moral beliefs also change.

Many fraudsters expressed that what was once considered dishonest no longer seemed honest once they were put in a higher position.

Who are the victims of fraud?

When you ask someone to describe what the victim of fraud looks like, they often describe an older adult.

There is a popular stereotypical narrative that fraudsters disproportionately victimize older adults; however, national data from the Federal Trade Commission suggests otherwise.

Generation X, Millennials, and young adults from Generation Z were likelier than people sixty and up to report losing money to fraud.

However, the data also suggest that when older people were victims of fraud, their losses were higher than younger people.

To learn more, check out our fraud quotes below for great content.

Short fraud quotes about the nature of deception

Fraud has been around for centuries, and these quotes explore how fraud impacts humanity.

1. “The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself.” — Gamaliel Bailey

2. “Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition.” — Maria Konnikova

3. “If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.” — V. S. Naipaul

4. “I know every trick in the book, in terms of schemes and fraud.” — Lori Lightfoot

5. “We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this.” — Meg Whitman

6. “There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.” — Frederick William Robertson

7. “There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.” — Charles Caleb Colton

8. “All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.” — H. L. Mencken

9. “A scam is a scam. A fraud is a fraud. Different rules don’t apply in the City than they do for you and me.” — Emily Thornberry

10. “With a gentleman, I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud, I try to be a fraud and a half.” — Otto von Bismarck

Fraud quotes about success and failure in life

Many people commit fraud out of fear of failure, and these quotes remind us that fraud may be inauthentic, but it can still be beautiful.

11. “Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.” — Sophocles

12. “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” — Jean-Luc Godard

13. “Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.” — Benito Mussolini

14. “I feel like a fraud. My name is not even actually Ashton. Ashton is my middle name.” — Ashton Kutcher

15. “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.” — Edgar Allan Poe

16. “I was presented as a con and a fraud, and a liar. I think some of the treatment was pretty cruel.” — Rachel Dolezal

17. “Herbalife: the customers are fictitious, the business opportunity is a scam, the university degree is a fraud.” — Bill Ackman

18. “Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved.” — Emma Watson

19. “We deploy a full arsenal of tools against voter fraud, including long prison terms, heavy fines, and deportation.” — Kate Brown

20. “Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of ‘spirituality’ or ‘mysticism’ to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception.” — Sam Harris

The top voter fraud and government quotes questioning election legitimacy and spending practices

Voter fraud is a popular buzzword that many politicians cite in their conversations.

Below is an interesting collection of quotes about voter fraud and government spending practices.

21. “The greatest threat to the constitutional right to vote is voter fraud.” — Lynn Westmoreland

22. “Pretending that voter fraud does not exist puts the integrity of our voting process at risk.” — Mercedes Schlapp

23. “The government is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power.” — Ted Nugent

24. “The documented incidences of voter fraud are very rare, yet throughout the country, forces have mobilized in over 30 states to stop it.” — John Lewis

25. “Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power.” — Denis Kearney

The government and fraud quotes

Here are additional quotes about election fraud, the government, and more.

26. “Fraud, robbery, and murder have characterized the English usurpation of the government of our country. Why, for the last fifty years, we have been robbed in the matter of taxes of hundreds of millions.” — John Edward Redmond

27. “When you have the president arguing that there was mass voter fraud in the absence of any evidence whatsoever – I mean, literally zero – what’s to stop anyone from saying so-and-so’s a so-and-so?” — John Fetterman

28. “We’re looking at all forms of election irregularities, voter fraud, voter registration fraud, voter intimidation, suppression, and looking at the vulnerabilities of the various elections we have in each of the 50 states.” — Kris Kobach

29. “Do you know who the real hypocrite is? It’s the federal government and the Justice Department. It’s a fraud; it’s a lie. They have no interest in the education of black children. They are only interested in the politics of it.” — James Meredith

30. “You know, when you have a million plus names on the rolls, people who aren’t voting or are inactive, dead, people who have moved away, that’s a massive pool of potential voter fraud opportunities for those who want to be able to steal elections.” — Tom Fitton

The best fraud alert quotes about knowing when to question a claim

Anyone can make a claim, but not everyone can deliver.

This selection of fraud quotes questions the ethics of fraudsters.

31. “It is a fraud to borrow what we are unable to pay.” — Publilius Syrus

32. “It is always right to detect a fraud and to perceive a folly, but it is very often wrong to expose either.” — Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

33. “Political freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.” — Mikhail Bakunin

34. “The man who makes a chattel of his brother, what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud, what is he?” — William Lloyd Garrison

35. “With Bitcoin, every transaction is publicly verified, so many risks are eliminated, including chargeback fraud or ‘friendly fraud.’” — Perianne Boring

Identity theft and fraud quotes

Here are a few additional quotes about those who commit fraud.

36. “Identity theft involving these cards is a growing form of white collar crime, facilitating illegal immigration, banking and accounting fraud, tax evasion, and other nefarious activities.” — Ron Lewis

37. “Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.” — Linus Pauling

38. “With a common-sense approach, we can reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, cut back on unnecessary bureaucracy, and provide for the pillars of a strong economy and life in our state.” — Jaime Harrison

39. “In terms of dangers, such as viruses, fraud, or identity theft, I don’t think we were thinking about that at all when we got started. If we had been worried about that, the net might have been better today, but we might not have even got there.” — Bob Kahn

40. “Mr. Sessions’ conduct as a U.S. Attorney, from his politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions to his indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights laws, indicated that he lacks the temperament, fairness, and judgment to be a federal judge.” — Coretta Scott King

Fraud quotes and sayings

These quotes are great to remember when it comes to avoiding fraud.

41. “Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.” — Charles Curtis

42. “Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere.” — Alan Greenspan

43. “The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation, and murder.” — Ida B. Wells

44. “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” — Salman Rushdie

45. “There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud.” — P. J. O’Rourke

46. “Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth. Phaedrus Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.” — Thomas Hobbes

47. “In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.” — Miroslav Volf

48. “The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.” — John Dalberg-Acton

49. “The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.” — Adam Smith

50. “Scientific fraud, plagiarism, and ghostwriting are increasingly being reported in the news media, creating the impression that misconduct has become a widespread and omnipresent evil in scientific research.” — Heinrich Rohrer

What are the best ways to avoid fraud?

Some people believe fraud is just a part of our new normal; In other words, fraud is just a part of life we must accept.

We live in a global society, and as our enmeshment with technology grows, it gets harder and harder to protect online information.

While technology has improved to keep data secure, identity theft and fraud are still problems we must address.

If we wish to avoid fraud, we can follow these steps:

Guard online information.
Monitor your accounts.
Check your credit report.

Aside from these steps, it is always a good idea to think twice about sharing any sensitive information.

Implementing fraud detection tools and apps can also increase your defenses.

Making yourself aware of the dangers of fraud and identity theft while reporting suspicious activity can increase your likelihood of avoiding being taken advantage of.