Definition: In a nutshell the Innocence Fraud phenomenon is when an actual, factual guilty, deceitful and manipulative individual i.e. murderer, rapist, thief, embezzler etc, is enabled by other manipulative and deceitful individuals; including family members, friends, lawyers, academics, former police and former FBI officers, content creator’s, private investigators, forensic scientists, hacks, writers, bloggers, authors, journalists, documentarians, celebrities and others – to lie on their behalf, whereby they craft a fabricated, but convincing narrative, in an attempt to give the impression the guilty individual is innocent.
The Innocence Fraud phenomenon is a multi million dollar industry of people profiteering off of getting murderers, rapists and other dangerous criminals out of prison, or obtaining them a “not guilty” verdict following a trial. To be clear, these people are not remotely innocent. Groups like the Innocence Project prey on unsuspecting people to harvest them for cash, get dangerous criminals out of prison and pretend to the world they are helping people, when in reality they are re-victimising the actual people impacted by these crimes!
Forensic scientist John M Collins Jr touched on the innocence fraud phenomenon in his 2019 book Crime Lab Report: An Anthology on Forensic Science in the Era of Criminal Justice Reform
Crime Lab Report placed itself at considerable risk being a lone voice within the forensic science community that was willing to challenge the rhetoric of innocence activists and their efforts to reform the criminal justice system… .But as evidence emerged that some innocence activists were willing to potentially resort to maliciousness and fraud as a way to secure the exoneration’s of convicted felons, Crime Lab Report launched an investigation that resulted in articles and a public speech that uncovered the dark side of the innocence movement (Excerpts from Abstract of chapter 11).
Below are links to some of our blog series and examples of the innocence fraud phenomenon, as well as podcasts talking about this real phenomenon.
INNOCENCE FRAUD PHENOMENON 