Dear S.J. What an interesting subject to research. While I have not been the subject of genealogical fraud, I have an opinion about it. I think that one of the worst things to do to a beginning researcher, which boarders on fraud, is to offer them useless products. I can think of 2 for example. First are the books containing "all" the people in the U.S. with the same surname. The publishers of these have downloaded all the same surnames from current nation-wide telephone directories and published them as a book. Unless you have a very unusual name, these are pretty much a waste of money. (My father-in-law bought one several years ago, and it was a waste of money.) Second are the people offering "25 family group sheets" of a particular surname. (I see this often on e-bay, including one current one for my surname Moulton) Again, unless you have a very very unusual name, these are worthless. I think that some beginning genealogists also lose money because they don't know what they are looking for, and therefore are not able to give hired researchers proper information. When they don't get helpful information back, they may erronously jump to the conclusion that they have "been taken," when it really was their own fault due to ignorance. Finally, some may consider bad researching fraud. For example, I volunteer in the NH vital records vault once a month. Recently a patron came in to do research for someone else who had corresponded with him on-line. I surely wouldn't have wanted that person doing research for me after I saw the sloppy notes and careless searching he did. However, since he had volunteered to do the lookups, and was not being paid, I guess I wouldn't call his results fraud. If he had been paid, and supplied the other person with incorrect or incomplete results, is it really fraud or just plain bad researching? Except for hiring accredited or certified researchers, we all take a lot of chances when we hire a researcher since it is difficult to judge the credentials of researchers, except by word-of-mouth reputations. Thanks for letting me put in my two cents. -Mary Ellen Moulton, Plaistow, NH