fraudster

UK/ˈfɹɔːdstə/US/ˈfɹɔdstɚ/

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — fraud sits at #2,459neutral

Other forms: fraudsters

A fraudster is somebody who cheats people out of money by lying. The fake invoice, the cloned bank website, the builder who takes the deposit and never returns.

The word is a favourite of newspapers and police statements, where it is short, clear and safely non-technical. It covers a wide range of crime — an online fraudster, a benefits fraudster, a convicted fraudster — and the common thread is deception rather than force. A thief takes; a fraudster persuades you to hand it over. The crime itself is fraud, and the adjective fraudulent describes the claim, the document or the scheme.

Definitions of fraudster

1nounfraudsterA person who cheats others out of money by deception.B2
“The fraudster had used three different names.”
synonyms: swindler, con artist

Where it comes from

Latin
fraus — deceit, injury, offence
Old French
fraude
Middle English
fraude
English
fraud
English, today
fraudster

From fraud + -ster. fraud comes from Middle English fraude. (recorded since 1345), from Old French fraude, a borrowing from Latin fraus (“deceit, injury, offence”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 14 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

fraudster in the wild

If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.
Advance-fee scam
Henri Lemoine was a French fraudster who claimed to be able to produce synthetic diamonds.
Henri Lemoine (fraudster)
Tanaka is an American businessman, convicted securities fraudster, sportsman and philanthropist who co-founded the investment company Amerindo Investment Advisors in 1979 along with Alberto Vilar.
Gary A. Tanaka
In reality, the fraudster almost always steals investor money for personal use.
Affinity fraud
Edward Ormus Sharrington Davenport is a convicted English fraudster, socialite, and property developer.
Edward Davenport (born 1966)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the fraus family

fraud

fraudster — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

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