fraudstress

English

Etymology

From fraudster +‎ -ess.

Noun

fraudstress (plural fraudstresses)

1. (rare) A female fraudster.
   • 1986, Great Britain Parliament, House of Commons, Official Report of the Standing Committees, page 25, column 2:

     Perhaps we should also have the concept of fraudstress or, if we are to eliminate such terminology from out^[sic] vocabulary, we should talk about a fraud person.

   • 1995, Fortean Times, page 18:

     […] 25-year-old benefit fraudstress […]

   • 2009 May 15, Colby Cosh, “From Craigslist to Johns’ List”, in National Post, volume 11, number 166, page A15:

     After all, there have must have been at least a dozen American serial killers who used newspaper personal and want ads to locate potential victims. They were essential to the modi operandi of Belle Gunness, the turn-of-the-century Western insurance fraudstress who may have killed 40 people before disappearing mysteriously, […]

   • 2013, Karen Lingefelt, chapter 3, in Wagered to the Duke, Siren-BookStrand, →ISBN, page 35:

     She was quite certain now there was a divine conspiracy to expose her for who and what she really was—Katherine Baxter, hopelessly on-the-shelf spinster, and just as hopelessly inept fraudstress—and banish her back to Bellingham Hall where she’d never see the light of day again.

   • 2018, Nadine Akkerman, “The Credibility and Archival Silence of She-Intelligencers: Women on the Council of State’s Payroll”, in Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 74:

     The sources, however, tell a different story, that of a fraudstress [Diana Stewart] who adapted to her circumstances like a chameleon in order to make a living, relying on female networks to gain credibility, and in the process hoodwinking both the Royalists and [John] Thurloe, while managing to keep her sexual reputation intact.

   • 2022, Olga Smith, “1970s: Engagement and Subjectivity”, in Contemporary Photography in France: Between Theory and Practice (The Lieven Gevaert Series), Leuven University Press, →ISBN, section “Mythologies of the Self: Photography in Artistic Practices”, page 49:

     The cast of characters she [Annette Messager] embodied in her projects included “the practical woman”, “the collector”, “the fraudstress” and “the artist”.