Acts of deliberately deceiving someone to gain money, property, or advantage, or people who commit such deceptions.
From Old French 'fraude' derived from Latin 'fraus' meaning deceit or treachery. The concept goes back to Roman law where fraud was a serious criminal offense.
Medieval merchants developed elaborate fraud-detection systems because fraud was so common that it actually drove the development of formal contracts, witnessed documents, and early accounting methods.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.