Fraud Investigation is Believing Your Lying Eyes
The financial industry has paid tens of billions of dollars in tuition on fraud detection. Here are some observations for investigators with badges, press cards, or GoPros.
Fraud Investigation is Believing Your Lying Eyes Patrick McKenzie (patio11) • Feb 6th, 2026 There was recently an attempt by an independent journalist to expose fraud in a Minnesota social program. It was deeply frustrating; the journalist had notably poor epistemic standards, which secondary media seized upon to dismiss their result. The class-based sniffing almost invariably noted that prestige media had already reported stories which rhymed with the core allegation, while sometimes implying that makes the allegations less likely to be true, through a logical pathway which is mysterious
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