3rd century B.C.E.: Archimedes (ca. 287–212 b.c.e.) discovers that he can determine the purity of gold in a crown by measuring how much water it displaces. If it is made of solid gold, it will displace the same amount of water as an equal weight of pure gold, whereas if it is made of gold combined with a lighter metal, it will displace more water.

ca. 8th century C.E.: A forged document, the Donation of Constantine, is used to justify papal supremacy.

ca. 13th century: Christian crusaders in the Holy Land create forged versions of the coins used by the local population.

1699: The English con artist and counterfeiter William Chalone is executed; Sir Isaac Newton, master of the Royal Mint, plays a key role in his conviction.

1702: The British collector William Charlton claims to have found a rare yellow butterfly with an unusual pattern of black spots on its wings. It is included in the 12th edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, but is later found to be a hoax, a common Brimstone butterfly with painted spots.

1720: In England, the value of a share of stock in the South Sea Company rises from 128 pounds in January to over 1,000 pounds by August, only to fall to 100 pounds by the end of the year; this is known as the “South Sea bubble.”

1760:Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands, marketed as an English translation of work by the 3rd-century Gaelic poet Ossian, is published. It is later revealed to be the work of James Macpherson, a contemporary Scotsman.

1784: The French Academy of the Sciences investigates the works of Anton Mesmer, who claims that he can heal illness through the use of magnets. The academy concludes that Mesmer's results were from the power of suggestion.

1836: The European naturalist Constantine S. Rafinesque claims to have discovered the Walam Olum, a document written in the Lenape language (used by the Delaware Indians) on bark, describing how the Indians populated North America. It is believed for decades to be genuine; not until 1996 was it demonstrated to be a hoax, as an examination of Rafinesque's papers proved that he first wrote it in English, and then translated it into Lenape.

1840: England issues the first postage stamp, the “penny black.” Forged versions began appearing within a year.

[Page xxx]1841: The Scottish author Charles Mackay publishes Extraordinary Popular Delusion and the Madness of Crowds, reporting on a number of historical phenomena including economic bubbles, prophecies, fortune telling, and witch hunts.

1848: American sisters Katherine and Margaret Fox report hearing strange rappings in their home, reportedly the result of spirit communications, and later put on public exhibitions of similar rappings. Scientist Sir William Crookes, among others, is taken in by their performance, which the sisters later reveal (in 1888) that they produced by cracking their toe joints.

1857: The Boston Courier offers a $500 prize for anyone who can produce a spiritualistic phenomenon in the presence of Benjamin Pierce, E. N. Horsford, and Louis S. Agassiz, professors at Harvard. Several well-known mediums try and fail to produce evidence sufficient to claim the prize.

1861: William H. Mumler, an engraver in Boston, begins selling “spirit photographs,” portraits in which a mysterious second image appears with as that of the sitter. Mumler was exposed as a fraud in 1863 when someone recognized that the “spirits” bore a remarkable resemblance to living persons in Boston.

1863: The U.S. Congress passes the False Claims Act, also known as the Lincoln Law because it was passed during Abraham Lincoln's presidency, in response to high levels of fraud perpetrated during the Civil War. The act allows people to report cases of suspected fraud against the government and collect a portion of the damages recovered.

1864: Samples from a meteor shower in southern France are collected and sent to various museums around Europe. In the 1960s, several researchers examined the samples in the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in Montauban, France, and found that they had been tampered with. Fragments of plants and coal had been inserted into the meteorite fragments, and the results were coated with glue to recreate an apparent fusion layer on the outside of the fragments.

1866: A human skull is discovered in a mine in Calaveras County, California. It is originally accepted as authentic, and is judged to be from the Pliocene age, making it the oldest human skull discovered in America. However, in the early 20th century, it was determined to have been planted at the site as a practical joke.

1879: Sarah Howe establishes the Ladies' Deposit Bank in Boston, offering returns of 8 percent monthly, and only accepting deposits from women. In 1880, a run on the bank demonstrated that the operation was a scam, and an estimated 800 women lost more than $250,000 in the process. Howe was sentenced to three years for obtaining money on false pretenses.

1882: The Society for Psychical Research authenticates Douglas Blackburn and G. A. Smith as having genuine telepathic powers. In 1908, Blackburn revealed the methods they used to fool the examiners.

1891: In Germany, William Van Osten claims that his horse, Clever Hans, can do mathematical calculations. This skill was later shown to be the result of unconscious signaling by the owner to his horse, a type of cuing now known in psychology as the ideomotor effect, or the Clever Hans phenomenon.

1892: The Ouija Board, a purported method of contacting spirits, is patented in the United States.

1893: German psychologist Max Dessoir publishes an article, “The Psychology of Ledgerdemain,” which claims that the ability of magicians to fool their audience depends on a partially inherited ability to guide the thoughts of others to a desired conclusion.

1900: American psychologist Joseph Jastrow publishes Fact and Fable in Psychology, including a chapter on “The Psychology of Deception,” which discusses the uncertainty of knowledge from sensory information and a doctrine of unconscious inference.

1900: American psychologist Norman Triplett writes his Ph.D. dissertation on the psychology [Page xxxi]of conjuring deceptions, in which he argues that primitive men developed to gain control over their peers. Triplett also believed that deception was common among young children, and as part of his work collected over 300 examples of spontaneous deception by children aged 3 and younger.

1908: German American psychologist Hugo Münsterberg publishes On the Witness Stand, which includes descriptions of experiments suggesting that eyewitness memories are not infallible.

1912: Charles Dawson launches the Piltdown Man hoax, displaying a fossilized skull reportedly discovered in a gravel pit in East Sussex, England. The skull was accepted for several decades as that of a modern human, forming a “missing link” in the evolution from apes to modern humans. In 1953, the Piltdown Man was determined to be a forgery, made up of a modern human skull and the jawbone of an orangutan.

1917: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson creates the Committee on Public Information when the United States enters World War I; this government office is the first in modern history to engage in large-scale propaganda dissemination.

1917: Creation of the first of several Cottingley fairy photographs, purporting to capture “real” fairies on photographic film. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was among the many people fooled by these photographs; the girls who created them, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, later admitted that they faked the pictures using paper cutouts from a children's book.

1920: Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi is arrested in the United States for running a scheme, which coined the term Ponzi scheme. Ponzi claimed to produce a 50 percent return in 90 days, which was temporarily supported by the attraction of money from new investors (rather than any actual plan of investment). Ponzi was deported to Italy in 1934 after his involvement in another scam involving Florida real estate.

1921: John August Larson develops an early version of the lie detector, or polygraph, to aid in determining the truth of answers given by those suspected of crimes. He automatically records a subject's blood pressure and breathing depth as he or she is asked a series of routine questions and questions related to a specific crime.

1923: The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) is founded in Vienna as the International Criminal Police Commission. The purpose of INTERPOL is to facilitate cooperation among police forces in different countries.

1925–26: Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf, a combination of biography and political statement; it includes comments on how to successfully use propaganda.

1926: In an attempt to demonstrate that acquired characteristics can be inherited (Lamarckian genetics), Austrian scientist Paul Kammerer conducts a series of experiments on the midwife toad. However, his apparent success in demonstrating that these toads, if forced to mate in water, would develop the black scaly bumps typical of toads that naturally mate in water is demonstrated to be a hoax, caused by injecting ink under the frogs' skin.

1931: Lloyd's of London begins offering a discount on their insurance rates to banks that require their employees to take lie detector tests. An astonishing number (10 to 25 percent) of employees admit to stealing, usually from petty cash.

1937: Edward Filene establishes the Institute of Propaganda and Analysis to help educate Americans to spot techniques commonly used in propaganda and reducing the effects of such techniques.

1937: Frank J. Wilson, newly appointed head of the U.S. Secret Service, begins a strenuous campaign against counterfeit currency that is credited with reducing losses from counterfeiting by 93 percent.

1940: American linguist David W. Maurer, a specialist on the language used by members of marginal American subcultures, publishes The Big Con, based on interviews with hundreds of con artists and other criminals.

[Page xxxii]1945: Leonarde Keeler is brought in to conduct polygraph tests on German prisoners in an Arizona prisoner-of-war camp to determine which of them harbors Nazi sympathies or otherwise poses a threat to the United States.

1946: English author George Orwell, in his essay, “Politics and the English Language,” criticizes the way that politicians use language to mislead people and hide the truth, and charges that bad writing habits can interfere with clear thinking.

1947: The Dutch painter Hans van Meegeren is convicted of forgery. His most notable work was a number of paintings that he claimed were painted by Vermeer, and which had been accepted by experts as genuine.

1947–53: Workers at the nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, are subjected to numerous polygraph tests, partly in response to the belief that Soviet spies had infiltrated the facility.

1953:Flying Saucers Have Landed, the first of several books by George Adamski that purport to describe his experiences traveling in outer space and communicating with extraterrestrial beings, is published.

1955: The London Society for Psychical Research publishes a report on the Borley Rectory, a purportedly haunted house built in 1863 in England, concluding that all reported phenomena could be explained by ordinary, natural causes.

1959: In the United States, the National Labor Relations Board rules that polygraph tests can be required as a condition of employment.

1968: American magician and skeptic James Randi offers a prize of $1,000 for anyone who can produce evidence of paranormal activity before a group of witnesses, on terms agreed upon by both parties. The value of the prize has since been increased to $1 million, but no one has successfully claimed it.

1968: Erich von Däniken publishes Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, arguing that the knowledge and technology required to produce various aspects of ancient religion and culture (e.g., Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt) were brought to Earth by visitors from outer space.

1968: The discovery of a pattern on the ocean floor near Bimini, an island in the Caribbean Sea, leads to claims that it was once a road, and the area is the location of the “lost continent” of Atlantis. In fact, the road-like features are part of a now-submerged coastline of the island.

1970s: Israeli performer Uri Geller frequently appears on television, demonstrating his apparent ability to exert physical effects (e.g., bending spoons) by only using the power of his mind. However, skeptic James Randi and others have since demonstrated that all of Geller's performances could be produced using tricks known to many magicians.

1970–75:The Amazing World of Kreskin, a television program starring George Joseph Kresge (a.k.a., the stage magician The Amazing Kreskin), is produced in Canada and broadcast in Canada and the United States. A key feature of the program is Kreskin's ability to “read” the audience to discover where his check for the evening's performance has been hidden; he does not claim to have paranormal powers, but instead relies on interpreting voices and body language.

1972: Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus publishes “Reconstructing Memory: The Incredible Eyewitness” in Psychology Today, detailing how it is possible to alter a person's memory of an event by asking leading questions or introducing other information.

1972: John D. Bransford and Marcia K. Johnson publish research showing that contextual information, such as providing titles to brief paragraphs to establish a context, affected encoding of the information in the paragraph. Providing such information before the subjects read the paragraph produces greater comprehension and recall than providing it after the paragraph.

1974: Charles Berlitz publishes The Bermuda Triangle, claiming that mysterious forces within an area defined by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto [Page xxxiii]Rico pose grave dangers to ships and airplanes. The book is partially based on a 1944 incident in which five U.S. Navy planes were lost in that region.

1974: Dermatologist William T. Summerlin, working at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, claims to have successfully grafted skin from a black mouse to a genetically unrelated white mouse. However, this claim is later determined to be fraudulent when the “black” skin patches are determined to have been colored by a felt marker, rather than originating from a black mouse.

1975: John Nance publishes The Gentle Tasaday: A Stone Age People in the Philippine Rain Forest, describing an isolated tribe living a primitive and peaceful lifestyle in the rain forest, without corruption or conflict. The story, originally perpetuated in 1971 by Manuel Elizalde Jr., the adviser to Ferdinand Marcos on Filipino national minorities, is exposed as a hoax in the 1980s, when tribal members said they were poor and had been pressured by Elizalde to live like a Stone Age tribe in order to receive assistance and serve Elizalde's political agenda.

1976: American Morris Lamar Keene publishes The Psychic Mafia, describing how he previously posed as a psychic, tricking thousands of people into believing that he had powers to contact spirits.

1976: The Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSI-COP) is founded in Buffalo, New York, to investigate claims of paranormal phenomena. CSI-COP publishes the Skeptical Inquirer, a journal carrying news of paranormal investigations.

1977: British painter Tom Keating is charged with forgery; although the charges are later dropped, he admits that he produced paintings attributed to a number of noted artists, including John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh.

1977: American psychologist Philip Zimbardo and colleagues coin the term the illusion of personal invulnerability to refer to the reaction of people when they hear of someone else victimized by a hoax; it rests on the probably unwarranted assumption that the listeners would have seen through the hoax.

1978–83: German forger Konrad Kujau creates the “Hitler Diaries,” which are later published in the German magazine Der Stern. Although some experts believe them to be genuine, they are later revealed as fake.

1979: Crop circles, complex geometric patterns created by flattening parts of grain fields, begin to appear in the United Kingdom. Although some believe that they are evidence of visitors from outer space, in 1992, two British men admitted to creating the first crop circles.

1979: Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus becomes the first person in Washington State to provide expert testimony about eyewitness identification. She testifies on the behalf of the defense in a murder trial, explaining how memory distortion can influence eyewitness testimony.

1984: Poltergeist phenomena are reported in the Columbus Dispatch, a newspaper in Ohio. The story received widespread coverage, but it was later shown to be the result of tricks by a 14-year-old girl, Tina Resch.

1985: Psychologist Bella M. DePaulo and colleagues establish that while young children frequently attempt to lie to adults, they are seldom successful; however, by the time they are fifth graders, children can often construct lies that fool adults, including their parents.

1986: Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal reports that chimpanzees engage in many apparently deceptive behaviors, such as pretending to ignore the presence of hidden food when another chimp is present. However, de Waal also acknowledges that it is impossible to establish intentionality in such cases.

1987: D. L. Delanoy and colleagues report on the results of a teenager who claimed to have psychic abilities and took part in over 20 testing sessions at the University of Edinburgh. The teenager was able [Page xxxiv]to bend metal objects under informal conditions, but never when strict controls were in place. In the final testing sessions, a hidden camera captured evidence that the teenager was performing tricks to produce his results. Delanoy and colleagues note that they were easily fooled by the teenager, and found him convincing until the hidden camera revealed how he was achieving his results.

1987–89: John Jacob Cannel investigates score inflation in standardized educational tests. One result of his study is the finding that in 48 of 50 states, students report performing above the national average, a result christened the “Lake Wobegon effect,” in reference to the fictional location in which all the children are above average.

1992: The Innocence Project is founded at Yeshiva University with the purpose of using DNA evidence to exonerate individuals who have been wrongfully convicted. As of 2012, over 290 people have been released as a result of the Innocence Project's work and, because the trials of many of the wrongfully convicted included eyewitness testimony, the Project also played a key role in questioning eyewitness accuracy, reinforcing similar evidence found in scientific research.

1994: In Ramona v. Isabella, Gary Ramona successfully establishes that his daughter's psychotherapists implanted false memories in his daughter's mind, leading to her accusations of his sexual abuse of her as a child. He is awarded $500,000 in damages for lost wages, and the case sets a precedent because third-party negligence suits were previously rare and seldom victorious.

1994: Professor Linda M. Williams publishes a study supporting the contention that memories of sexual abuse are sometimes repressed. For the study, she interviewed 129 women who were known to have been sexually abused—based on hospital records of their treatment for the abuse—and found that 38 percent of them failed to mention the abuse, even when specifically questioned about it.

1995: Nicholas Leeson, a British broker for Barings Bank in the United Kingdom, is convicted in Singapore of forgery and other acts of fraud. Leeson had been engaged in speculative trading since 1992, using a Barings “error account” to hide his losses, which reached over $1 billion by 1995, and caused Barings Bank to collapse.

1996: Alan Sokal, a physics professor, publishes the article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” in the journal Social Text. He later reveals that the article was a hoax, submitted to demonstrate the lack of intellectual rigor in the journal and in the field of cultural studies more generally.

1998: British physician Andrew Wakefield publishes case studies claiming to support a link between autism and the childhood measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. This report is later determined to be based on faked data, and in 2010, Wake-field's name is struck off the Medical Register and he is barred from practicing medicine in the United Kingdom. Many of his supporters still believe that vaccines can cause autism, and refuse to have their children injected with the vaccine.

1998: The journalist Stephen Glass is discovered to have falsified all or part of at least 27 stories he wrote for the New Republic magazine from 1995 to 1998.

1999: The Canadian theatrical producers Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb are indicted in New York on charges of fraud and embezzlement in connection with the Canadian production company Live Entertainment Corporation of Canada Inc. In 2009, both were convicted of fraud and forgery in Canada; they remain under fugitive arrest warrants in the United States.

1999: The National Geographic Society announces that a fossil discovered in China establishes the validity of the hypothesized link between dinosaurs and modern birds; it has the body of a bird and the tail of a dinosaur. However, this discovery is quickly recognized as a fraud, made up of two separate fossils. In March 2000, National Geographic published an admission of the error.

1999: In the United States, the Department of Energy resumes the use of mandatory polygraph tests for people working in nuclear weapons labs.

[Page xxxv]2000: The film Boiler Room, distributed by New Line Cinema, dramatizes a “pump and dump” operation in which a crew of young salesmen sell overvalued or worthless stock shares over the phone to customers by misleading them about the shares' values; causing the shares to temporarily rise in price.

2000: Eastgate Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio, is praised by President Clinton for the improved standardized test scores of its students. However, several students from the school later come forward and say that they were given correct answers on the test by a teacher's aide.

2000: The Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura admits that many of his “discoveries” were fakes, after a newspaper produces photographs showing him burying artifacts on a site in Miyagi Prefecture, where he would later “discover” them.

2000: Professors Barbara Tversky and Elizabeth J. Marsh publish research indicating that memories are altered by retelling events and changing the context in which they are retold because retelling involves selectively retrieving and using information.

2000: Jonathan Lebed, a New Jersey high school student, becomes the youngest person to face charges of stock fraud. He bought stocks and promoted them on Internet message boards using multiple aliases, then sold them after the price rose (a “pump and dump” scheme). The case was settled in 2001, when Lebed agreed to forfeit a share of his profits.

2001: On December 2, American energy company Enron files for bankruptcy amid widespread indications of fraud. It is the biggest bankruptcy in the United States, and Enron shares are worth less than $1 on the day of the bankruptcy filing, as compared to a high of over $90 per share in August 2000.

2001: Martha Stewart, an American publisher and media personality, is accused of engaging in insider trading by ordering her broker to sell shares of ImClone Systems immediately before news became public that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would not approve a new drug created by ImClone. Stewart is later convicted of obstruction of justice, and is sentenced to six months in jail. ImClone CEO Samuel Waksal, who provided her with the information, is sentenced to seven years.

2002: Accounting firm Arthur Anderson is found guilty of obstruction of justice over its part in destroying documents related to the Enron scandal. Although this decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, the company did not resume operations because its reputation was destroyed.

2002: Economists Stephen Levitt and Brian Jacob examine standardized test results from the Chicago Public Schools from 1993 to 2000 and charge that cheating occurs in 4 to 5 percent of classrooms each year. Their results, which are based on the examining patterns of answers on test sheets, are supported when students in classes suspected of cheating retake the test under close supervision and score substantially lower.

2003: Bernie Ebbers, cofounder and chief executive officer of WorldCom, is convicted of fraud. WorldCom's bankruptcy in 2002 was the largest in history until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008.

2003: Jayson Blair, a 23-year-old reporter for the New York Times, is dismissed after it is revealed that he had plagiarized and/or fabricated information in numerous stories written for the Times. Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd also resigned from the Times over the scandal.

2004: In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announces that, since 2000, its investigations into financial fraud have resulted in over 11,000 convictions and over $8.1 billion in restitution orders.

2004: In Birmingham, Alabama, the director of a general educational development (GED) program finds that 5.6 percent of the student population of one high school, Woodlawn, was forced [Page xxxvi]to withdraw before the state standardized tests were administered because they were projected to receive low scores, thus lowering the school average.

2006: The Brennan Center for Justice, part of the New York University School of Law, reports that voter fraud is extremely rare; for instance, it occurred about 0.0009 percent of the time in the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election.

2006: John Paul Lewis, Jr., is convicted of fraud for a long-running Ponzi scheme in California, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

2008: American broker Bernard Madoff is revealed to be running a Ponzi scheme involving thousands of investors and over $65 billion in investments. In 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison.

2008: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announces that it has halted a Ponzi scheme targeting the Haitian American community through a series of investment clubs.

2008: Lou Pearlman, well known for his work creating and promoting boy bands such as 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, is convicted of conspiracy, money laundering, and other charges as part of a Ponzi scheme he operated for over 20 years.

2009: Marcus J. Schrenker, an investment adviser facing charges of defrauding investors, attempts to fake his own death in January through a plane crash.

2009: The SEC obtains a court order to halt a Ponzi scheme targeting members of the deaf community in Japan and the United States; the scheme is run by Billion Coupons Inc., a company based in Hawaii.

2009: Marc S. Dreier pleads guilty to investment fraud over a Ponzi scheme that stole a reported $380 million. He also faces charges in Canada for impersonating a lawyer in connection with the sale of financial instruments to the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

2010: Harry Markopolos publishes No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller, detailing how he uncovered Bernard Madoff's financial deceptions years before the scandal became public, and his difficulties in having the SEC take note of his investigations.

2010:Inside Job, a documentary directed by Charles Ferguson, examines the causes behind the global financial crisis of 2008; it wins the Oscar for Best Documentary.

2011: In the United States, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services begins screening Medicare fee-for-service claims through its Fraud Prevention System, a process similar to the screening technology used by credit card companies.

2011: In Los Angeles, the director of Crescendo charter schools is found to have ordered the principals in its six schools to literally teach to the test to raise student scores on the state standardized tests. The principals were ordered to open the seal on the state exams and teach students using the actual test questions.

2011: Raj Rajaratnam is convicted on fraud charges in connection with his activities with Galleon Group, one of the world's largest hedge funds.

2011: Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel is suspended from his post at Bilburg University on the basis of alleged scientific misconduct, including fabricating data.

2011: The U.S. government announces that it has recovered over $10.7 billion in fraudulent health care claims over the past three years, with $4.1 billion in fiscal year 2011 alone.

2011: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on a widespread cheating scandal in the Atlanta public schools, in which cheating was so commonplace in some schools that teachers organized “erasure parties” to change numerous student answers on test forms from incorrect to correct.

2011: The scientific journal Nature issues a report stating that published retractions of scientific papers has increased 10 times over the past [Page xxxvii]decade, while the number of published papers has increased only 44 percent in the same period. The most common reason cited for retraction is misconduct, including falsified data and plagiarism.

2012: Production of the Broadway musical Rebecca, based on the Alfred Hitchcock film, is delayed when about one-third of the show's financing evaporates, reportedly due to the death of an investor who was later determined to be fictional. Several individuals are under criminal investigation in the matter, and a civil lawsuit is filed against Mark Hotton, who acted as a middleman between the show's producer and the alleged investor.

2012: Citigroup agrees to pay over $158 million to settle multiple cases of mortgage fraud, including its applications for FHA mortgage insurance for about 30,000 mortgages using certifications that were known to be false. About one-third of the mortgage loans in question went into default.

2012: About 70 students at New York City's prestigious Stuyvesant High School are placed under investigation in a cheating scandal. The students are accused of electronically sending or receiving answers (including by smartphone) to Advanced Placement exams given at the school in June.

2012: Rajat K. Gupta, a former director of Goldman Sachs, is convicted of passing insider information to Raj Rajaratnam, the former head of the hedge fund Galleon Group.

2012: As of October, 19 U.S. states have regulations (executive actions or laws) aimed at preventing voter fraud, such as requiring prospective voters to present an approved photo ID at the polling place.

2012: The U.S. Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force files charges in October against 91 individuals for participating in various fraudulent activities, resulting in $432 billion in false billing, including over $100 million in community health care fraud, $49 billion in ambulance fraud, and over $230 million in home health care fraud.

2012: Lorraine O. Brown pleads guilty in November to charges of criminal fraud. Brown, the former president of DocX, one of the largest foreclosure-processing companies in the United States, admits to participating in the falsification of over 1 million mortgage documents, many of which were used in foreclosure proceedings.

2012: A cheating scandal at Harvard implicates about half the students in a 279-person undergraduate class, including a number of prominent athletes. The basis for the allegations are identical or nearly identical responses submitted as part of the class's take-home final.

2012: Falko Bindrich, a German chess grandmaster, is accused of cheating during a November match by using his smartphone to access a chess program during breaks. He refuses to let officials inspect his phone, and forfeits the match.

2013: Cycling champion Lance Armstrong admits that he engaged in an organized and long-term program of blood-doping and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, despite previously having denied the use of artificial enhancements while he was competing.

2013: Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, announces that an 18-month investigation yielded evidence suggesting match-fixing in 680 soccer games played in 15 countries, including World Cup qualifiers and Champions League games.