Bedrägeribrottsligheten i Mölndal

Abstract

Aims and objectives: The purpose of the study is to map fraud crimes in Mölndal municipality and to test the use of crime reporting data in combination with key informant interviews in a crime mapping context. Thus, two research questions were constructed; (1) What characterizes the fraud crime´s extent and nature in Mölndal municipality?, (2) Which advantages and disadvantages are there in using crime reporting data in combination with key informant interviews in a fraud crime mapping? Method and data: The main methods used in this study are statistical analysis of crime reports, key informants interviews and document analysis of police reports. The crime reports consisted of 3981 reported fraud crimes in Mölndal municipality between the years 2022-2025 and were derived from an internal Police system. The crime statistics were used to construct heat maps in QGIS and charts in Excel. Reported fraud crimes, derived from Brå in Gothenburg and Sweden were used to do comparisons. Furthermore, six key informant interviews were carried out with key informants in the municipality which were later analyzed using a thematic analysis. The document analysis consisted of 131 police reports which represent all reported fraud crimes during March 2025. Results: The main results regarding the extent of the fraud crimes in Mölndal municipality showed that frauds had increased extensively, especially card related frauds which could be connected to an increased use of E-commerce. This increase could have a connection to the increase of reported frauds during the summer months as well. Thus, the extent of fraud crimes tends to follow the development of technology. Moreover, the results showed that fraud crimes are concentrated to the city center and indications of near-repeat-patterns could be seen. Victims of fraud had an average age of 50 years and no gender differences were observed. The victims tended to be alone during the time of the crime and showed no patterns of repeat victimization in comparison to companies that tended to be victimized during multiple occasions which are not reported to the Police. Furthermore, phising and social manipulation were showed to be recurrent strategies, often at digital platforms such as Facebook Marketplace and Blocket, used by the offenders, who has an association to organized crime networks. There are both advantages and disadvantages with using crime reporting data in combination with key informant interviews; due to dark figures the interviews worked as a beneficial complement. However, there are few individuals with local knowledge and they lack precise formulations which makes the method difficult to measure.