英文摘要 |
Financial fraud (Ponzi scheme) is disguised as long-lasting and professional financial investment, and initiated by deceivers who utilize signals from social networks, institutions and general values to attract investors who are in a familiar network. Our data came from both in-depth interviews and secondary materials. We found that financial fraud attracts members from existing social networks, and it manipulates signs in order to exhibit a successful financial investment. Deceivers rouse the quasi-family emotion to consolidate relationships among core groups, by both holding special activities to build up collective effervescence and creating an impression of counterculture to, therefore, maintain the legitimacy of mimicry. Members of fraud gang encounter a dilemma of simultaneously being both a deceiver and a dupe, which makes it very difficult to leave the gang. We conclude that financial fraud was born with society, and sticks to both the surface of institutions and the interior of social networks, thus coexisting with financial activities and society. |