Financial Crime and Corruption by Samuel Vaknin

1. Crooks and other illegal operators. These take

advantage of ignorance, superstition, greed, avarice, emotional states of mind of their victims - to strike. They re-allocate resources from (potentially or actually) productive agents to themselves. Because they reduce the level of trust in the marketplace - they create negative added value. (See: "The Shadowy World of International Finance" and "The Fabric of Economic Trust")