Ignore the clickbait headline… The real story is the admitted prevalence of “first-party fraud”, especially amongst younger adults (ages ~18 to ~42).
In a new survey, 55% of Gen Z and 49% of Millennials earning more than $100,000 a year said they have [stolen from online merchants] in the past year, per antifraud tech company Socure.
These practices, such as disputing legitimate credit or debit card transactions, falsely claiming that a delivery has been lost or stolen to receive a refund or making purchases with through a credit card or Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) lender with no intention of paying it back, costs businesses more than $100 billion annually, according to Socure. This includes $89 billion from chargebacks, promotional abuse and return fraud, and $18 billion in credit card fraud losses.
- Wealthier consumers were clearly comfortable with committing fraud. Those with household incomes of more than $100,000 were twice as likely to engage in first-party fraud compared to those with lower incomes (25% vs 11%).
- There is a concerning willingness to engage in high-value fraud, as one in six (17%) offenses are related to transactions exceeding $500, and over half (59%) are over $100.
- The most prevalent types of first-party fraud in the U.S. were disputing legitimate financial transactions (12%), choosing not to pay off credit card bills (11%), claiming that an online purchase was lost even though it was received (11%) and falsely claiming that a delivered package was stolen or damaged (11%).
And yet retailers are scared to death to have “unfriendly” policies for fear that they’d lose legitimate buyers.
Returns, chargebacks, lost delivery claims should be a rarity, not the norm.
Greed will not willingly return to the box.
You’d think that credit card companies would be putting the kibosh on their most frequent fliers’ false claims–even if online marketplaces are normalizing these behaviors at these rates.
Not surprised by the Boomer number being so low, nor the increase as the age of the perp decreases. If I walk out of a store and found that they made a mistake and did not charge enough, I go back and make it right.
Remember when I caught one of my kids stealing (pre eCommerce) I took them back to the store, made them apologize, and pay for the item. Those days and lessons like that are a thing of the past.
To the “Rich issue” I have had many conversations over the years with those that earn a living with (mostly) tips. They have told me, it is the lower income and poor people that take care of us. The upper middle, and upper class, not so much. The ultra wealthy also take care of us.
Never forgot this statement, “When I make a delivery and the car in the drive is old and warn, I know I will get a good tip. A expensive car, I know ‘little or no tip’ today!”
I have corrected many more cashiers for giving me too much change rather than too little. I have gone back to grocery stores with a receipt because I took food that wasn’t charged. I have argued with Amazon Customer Support who tried to give me a full refund without a return because they were giving away other people’s money unfairly. I have cost companies I worked for money because I refused to cut legal and ethical corners, to the point where at one job even the legal department knew if they wanted to do something shady, make sure they did it where I wouldn’t see.
I am not a thief, and I do not condone theft.
I am also not a Baby Boomer.
Dunno what counts as fraud…for instance, my woman ordered a very expensive perfume from an online retailer which sells it for about half. The bottle arrived, perfectly, and upon first use the sprayer cap broke. She was stumped as innocent as she can be sometime…I said RMA that 
right away. It retails for some $180ish and the price was $90ish - so there is a lot of that, that happens.
Also I’m still young…what?
Ah, I’d say that that IS so from a societal-cohesion standpoint, surely enough - but leave us not lightly overlook the role played by transactional fees in perpetuating the transaction-insurers’ turning of a blind eye to the ever-increasing rate of what they write off as “Friendly Fraud” (link, SAS).
If there’s one thing we wee humans can learn from Recorded History - among those many lessons found there - when it comes to profit-making enterprises gone rogue, it is surely this one:
ALWAYS Follow The Money
I think the story might be that rich is not likely to be an important predictor of behavior.
The graph of behavior by generation might really be a measure of wealth.
As we go up in age to the boomer generation, the amount of wealth held by the generations increases.
The wealthy are probably less likely to engage in petty theft. And we all know that the largest amount of this country’s wealth is held by the elderly.
Gen Z, even rich GenZers have not had enough time to acquire wealth, with few exceptions.
My first reaction was to attempt to draw some moral comparison, but my personal experience does not reflect different morality or ethics based on age, no matter what I read on social media.
I asked, and they said, no, your woman was scammed, not the other way around. Save for your records! 
Seriously, they did detail some examples of “digital shoplifting”:
I find these statistics disturbing. They correspond w/ poll percentages of younger generations who believe Luigi Mangione is a hero and struck a blow for social justice against corporate America.
Is it that America society is inherently bad, as younger folks have been duped to believe-or we, the older generations, have encouraged instant gratification and failed in our roles as guardians/role-models of morality?
Its a tad broad strokes with very broad brush me thinks
Those two issues are worlds apart
I’m wondering if the fraud rate distribution skewing to the younger groups is at least partially attributable to the rampant online piracy that was occurring during their formative years. Kids crave music, movies, and games, and it was the rare parent that would reprimand their children for illegal downloads (I did, because I make money off of intellectual property, so it was a little personal for me). Kids grew accustomed to getting what they wanted for no cost. Now they’re adults with the same expectations.
I can’t speak for any other parents or kids, but this (piracy) wasn’t widespread in my circles because no homeowner wanted responsibility for law enforcement actions undertaken by minors in their houses.
The only person I knew who ever did it was an older-than-me GenXer (now in his 50s) who was a hacker in general, including piracy for music. He neither lived with parents nor had children, at the time.
So…I’m not sure overindulgent parents can explain it all.
But there does certainly seem to be a sense of entitlement that is interesting.
My parents could not boot the computer let alone comprehend stolen software when i was growing up. The VCR blinked 12:00 until I set the clock in 1989.
In my experience, there seems to be a strong belief among the under 30 or 40 crowd that the world is getting worse, or even that it is doomed. ( This belief is held in complete defiance of obvious facts that indicate otherwise. )
Many of these youngsters are therefore apathetic, and/or resentful. They do not see theselves as members of a community - unless that community consists of people who are the same age and have the same musical taste as themselves.
The idea of being a participating citizen in a democracy means nothing to them. Nor does being part of a neighborhood community.
Many see themselves as victims. Any problem that they have can be blamed on some opposing group. They often see the world a zero-sum game, and believe that if someone benefits from a transaction, someone else must be losing.
They will claim that they value ‘not being judgemental’, and will digitally eviscerate anyone who appears to be making any kind of racial judgement. But they will freely discriminate - even proudly discriminate! - against other groups who they perceive as being victimizers: the rich, law enforcement, capitalists, business owners.
So any initiative that they may have is often directed against other people. This includes anything from petty theft to the occasional murder.
I don’t worry about scammers trying to cheat me out of a 50 to 100 dollar book. My experience has shown that it is the sub-30 dollar books that are often the vehicles for attemped fraud.
If they are textbooks, fraud is even more likely.
I looked at the referrenced article, and saw no attempt to normalize the data with regard to opportunity.
IOW, they did not ask how many poor or working class people had credit cards. This, IMHO, biases their study against the rich.
Many poor people don’t have credit cards. They can’t participate in online fraud, even if their character and desires would permit it.
To get an accurate study, the researchers should compare the behavior of poor people with credit cards vs the behavior of rich people with credit cards.
Many of the poor people have debit cards and most of them offer similar opportunities for fraud.
The “unbanked” are not a large enough percentage of the population to change the data or the preferred interpretations.
Working class people are targets for some credit card issuers, so they can play the game like the higher wage owners.
Most of your post is unrelated to and not supported by this article.
The article does not claim that propensity for theft is inversely tied to age. It claims that propensity for first person fraud on eCommerce channels is inversely tied to age, and more significantly, directly tied to income. According to this article, in every age group this sort of theft is more likely among higher paid people than lower.
While it is true that the article also points out a significant age discrepancy who who commits this sort of fraud, that is hardly surprising. Older people who did not grow up in the age of Next Day Shipping are less likely to shop online in the first place, and they have decades of established habits of committing their thefts through more traditional means. That younger generations raised with this sort of technology would be more comfortable using it to steal seems a fairly obvious conclusion. I have not seen any evidence that rates of theft or fraud in general have the sort of age correlation that you are arguing.
This is true, but also not relevant. The survey only polled people who shop online, and therefore by definition only included customers, including low income shoppers, who can and do shop online. Therefore, customers both rich and poor who don’t shop online are not represented. The prospective larcenous ambitions of people too poor to have a credit card is outside the purview of this survey.
It is also worth noting that the sample size was 2000 people, so I think that especially in conjunction with the broad, vague conclusions drawn, we should all take these conclusions with a healthy does of salt.
I find this statement ironic.
People under 40 are worse than they were in my day. Now they just think everything is getting worse, not like we used to do! Now we just think everything isn’t as good as it used to be…
In many metrics it is worse. There is a long list of things that make things worse for the average person compared to previous decades of opportunities as an American.
“It’s never been a better time to be exceptional, but it’s a worse time to average” - Scott Galloway
