A review by joreadsbooks
Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry by Kelly Richmond Pope

informative medium-paced

4.0

 Content warnings: fraud, discussion of the Tuskegee Institute Syphilis Experiment

The title of this one is what caught me – fraud as a three billion dollar industry is absolutely bananas to me. It’s everywhere. This book doesn’t necessarily focus on the frauds as events, but it does zero in on the people at the heart of scams, the perpetrators, the victims, and the fraudsters themselves. An interesting look into the behavioral economics behind fraud and an empathetic look at all those involved and affected.

If you’re someone who wants snippets of different types of whistleblowers and the ways people react to their work, this is one to pick up.

The overview of each story is very superficial, but each one piqued my interest in that they contextualized the many bills and acts that affect how situations are fined and investigated today. Unfortunately, so much of the motivation behind fraud comes down to human nature and taking too many liberties when there is a lack of oversight, but Pope works to make the stories relatable because at any moment, one of her readers might be a perpetrator or a victim of fraud. Her stories are somewhat relatable, and, when they’re specific to larger situations, she tries to contextualize them for the reader.

Forensic accounting is a study I had never heard of before picking this up, and it’s definitely something I want to learn more about.