Which states are the worst for fraud?

Nevada led the way among the states in having the highest rate of business fraud, according to new research, but it wasn’t alone in having high rates of fraud.

The research, released this month by the anti-fraud group SEON, looked at the states with the highest rates of business fraud per 100,000 people, based on data from the Federal Trade Commission. The researchers looked at both the total number of fraud reports in each state along with the total number of business or corporate fraud cases. SEON then compared this to population data to find the relative rates of fraud and business fraud in each geographical area.

The report found that Nevada is the biggest business fraud hotspot in the U.S., with 18.94 reports of business fraud per 100,000 people. That’s more than 2.5 times the rate in the country’s best-performing state, Nebraska, where there were only 7.24 reports per 100,000 people.

Not far behind Nevada was the second place hotspot, Maryland. Even though it had nearly double the number of business fraud incidents as Nevada, Maryland’s large population put it in second place overall.

In third place came Arkansas. Despite the low total number of business fraud reports, this state has a much higher than average rate of business fraud when looked at on a “per head” basis.

The researchers also examined the states that are the worst places to be hit by fraud in the U.S. as they have the highest average loss per reported fraud case.

They found California is the state with the highest average loss per fraud report at $2,525. As one of the planet’s largest economies and the home of Silicon Valley, California has become a prime target for fraudsters looking for high-value scores.

In contrast to California, Wyoming has one of the smaller total numbers of fraud reports, but the average cost of these fraud incidents is as much as $2,245, making it the second-highest in the country.

North Dakota claimed third place, with average losses per reported case of fraud standing at $2,050. However, the median losses in North Dakota are significantly lower than those in other states this high up the table, suggesting that the data may be skewed by a few particularly costly incidents of fraud.

States with the most overall fraud per head

In addition, the researchers found that Rhode Island has the highest number of fraud reports per 100,000 in the country at 1,017. The state with the third-highest rate of fraud reports is Colorado, with almost 30,000 reported cases of fraud in a population of approximately 5.8 million.