Beyond the fraud triangle: Swiss and Austrian elite fraudsters

We suggest that when using the fraud triangle, academics and professionals should take account of the insights gleaned from our study, in which Switzerland and Austria's “elite” white-collar offenders with high professional standing and respectability were interviewed. Our perpetrators consider that only opportunity is a universal precondition of acts defined by others as fraud, though perceived pressure is salient to most frauds. By contrast, financial incentives are not required to be motivational elements. The frequently cited “rationalisation” is too simplistic: rather, a fraud-inhibiting inner voice before the crime and a guilty conscience after it were present among those interviewed.