Shortlist for ISEC Awards 2026

Jun 15
3 min read

ISEC are pleased to announce the shortlist for their first set of awards from which the winners will be announced at the ISEC conference on the 7^th September at Kingston University. ISEC plan some events to showcase this excellent research and if you would like to vote to decide the winners make sure you are an ISEC member! The shortlist was derived from nominations by ISEC members, which were then voted on by the ISEC Judges Panel. To participate make sure you are a member by joining here. Some of the other awards have been decided by the Judges and these will also be announced at the September 7^th ISEC conference.

Books

Franceschini, I., Li, L., & Bo, M. (2025). Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds. Verso Books.

Lord, N., & Levi, M. (2025). Organising White-Collar and corporate crimes. Routledge.

Goldbarsht, D. (2025). Combating Financial Crime: Intended and Unintended Consequences. Springer Nature.

Asher, J. (2025). Fraud markers, de-banking, and financial crime: A legal analysis of counter-fraud practices in the UK and beyond. Routledge.

Williams, S., Kapardis, M. K., & Kihl, L. A. (Eds.). (2025). Routledge Handbook of Gender and Corruption. Taylor & Francis.

Best Paper by a Practitioner

Day, T. (2025). An exploration of the anatomy of doorstep crime rogue trading. Journal of Economic Criminology, 8, 100149. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949791425000259

Freeman, C. (2025). Fraud and complexity theory: Moving beyond the fraud triangle towards a new theoretical framework. Journal of Economic Criminology, 10, 100198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeconc.2025.100198

Cyber Prevent A descriptive evaluation of cohort reoffending - Ethan Thomas https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/788-nca-report-cyber-prevent-reoffending/file

Jimenez, A. (2025). The exploitation gamble: Financial sextortion of minors. ACAMS Today. https://www.acams.org/en/opinion/the-exploitation-gamble-financial-sextortion-of-minors

Best Paper by an Academic

Taiwo, O. O., & Tade, O. (2025). ‘Prosecuting fraud takes time and money’: understanding fraud investigation and prosecution by the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps. Journal of Financial Crime, 32(6), 1235-1250. https://www.emerald.com/jfc/article-abstract/32/6/1235/1309182/Prosecuting-fraud-takes-time-and-money?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Dulisse, B., Fitch, C., Denis, J., & Connealy, N. (2025). Old techniques, new technologies: exploring patterns from scammers that commit financial fraud via cryptocurrency. Journal of Economic Criminology, 9, 100178. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949791425000545

Lazarus, S., Hughes, M., Button, M., & Garba, K. H. (2025). Fraud as legitimate retribution for colonial injustice: Neutralization techniques in interviews with police and online romance fraud offenders. Deviant Behavior, 47(3), 427–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2024.2446328

Han, B., & Button, M. (2026). An anatomy of ‘pig butchering scams’: Chinese victims’ and police officers’ perspectives. Deviant Behavior, 47(4), 635-653. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01639625.2025.2453821

Boddy, C. R., Freeman, C., & Karpacheva-Hock, E. (2024). Fraud and corporate psychopaths: The proposition for reintroducing personality traits of the economic crime offender. Journal of Economic Criminology, 5, Article 100081. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeconc.2024.100081

Best Paper by an ECR

Sultan, N., Passas, N., Mohamed, N., Hussain, D., & Sulaiman, S. (2025). The nexus of environmental crimes and money laundering/terrorist financing: effectiveness of the FATF recommendations against green criminology in developing jurisdictions. Journal of Money Laundering Control, 28(3), 485-503. https://www.emerald.com/jmlc/article/28/3/485/1247249

Whittaker, J. M., McGuire, M. R., & Lazarus, S. (2025). Conversations with deviant website developers: A case study of online shopping fraud enablers. Journal of Criminology, 59(1), 130-147. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/26338076251321844

Lazarus, S., Soares, A. B., & Button, M. (2025). Pathways, pressure, and profit: Adaptive innovation and strain in a convicted cybercrime academy called Hustle Kingdom. Deviant Behavior, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2551790

Nazzari, M., & Reuter, P. (2025). How well does the money laundering control system work?. Crime and Justice, 54(1), 67-152. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/735665

Best PhD

Sarkar, G. (2025). Digital investigative infrastructures for cybercrime: A human-centric approach from India's policing perspective [Doctoral dissertation, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur].

Michail, N (2025) Developing a Central Bank Digital Currency in Australia: Legal and Regulatory Issues to be Addressed' by Nancy Michail PhD

Bozinova, M (Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland) - "Stories of Negotiated Justice: A Comparative Narrative Analysis of Swiss Summary Penalty Orders and UK Deferred Prosecution Agreements in Transnational Corporate Bribery Cases"

Anna Machura-Urbaniak (2025) Misconduct in Banking and Finance Industry: Implications of Behavioural Science Research for EU Law (Doctoral dissertation, University of Luxembourg). Access provided solely for the purpose of the purposes of the competition https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dApXdzV9VsNSTvNlrqiHQa9c7v5Q65X9/view?usp=share_link

Frow-Jones, B. (2024). Prison staff wrongdoing: an exploratory study (Doctoral dissertation, Cardiff University). https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176744/