Samenvatting

Online fraudsters seem to adapt to new digital opportunities. While the academic literature about phishing mainly focuses on phishing through emails, fraudsters also appear to use new means of communication and platforms to find and deceive their victims. Based on analysis of 728 police reports from the period from June 20th to August 20th 2019, this article provides a descriptive study on the new phenomenon of payment request fraud on the Dutch advertisement platform Marktplaats.nl (similar to eBay). The article will provide a thorough description of the crime script and its success factors. As fraudsters now use new means of communication, it will also be assessed to what extent they use new persuasion techniques, and to what extent victims may have different characteristics. The research, therefore, focuses on the modus operandi, persuasion techniques used by the fraudsters, and victim characteristics.