Samenvatting

In the Internet era, banking fraud has become a common way of stealing money. According to victim surveys, this offense has already led to significant numbers of victims. In this article, the authors focus on illegal bank account withdrawals, which are an indication of identity fraud. For this they use data on 636 victims who were surveyed in the LISS panel. Using the concept of ‘capability to act’, as used in the WRR report Why knowing what to do is not enough (2017), the authors model which type of victim takes action to get the stolen amount reimbursed and which type of victim succeeds in doing so. They expect that the less educated and people with low self-control more often refrain from contact with authorities (bank, police) and therefore more often receive no compensation and remain with higher residual damage. The results show that approximately four in five victims of unauthorized bank debits are fully compensated. For the group of victims for whom this is not the case – remaining with residual damage – most of the hypotheses are confirmed.