Crédito perigoso: disputas na responsabilização de golpes financeiros digitais no Brasil pós-pandemia

Financial fraud has grown significantly in Brazil in the post-pandemic period, in terms of both the types of fraud committed and their overall quantity. Taking an ethnographic approach, this article analyses two distinct cases of digital fraud involving loans and card cloning that occurred within a financial institution. The ethnographic study traces the victims’ efforts to hold financial institutions accountable and their pursuit of justice and reparation, which included the complaint channels within the financial institutions involved, the filing of police reports, the formation of support networks with other victims of the same type of fraud, and mobilising legal action. The analysis reveals the asymmetries between victims and financial institutions throughout the process and how this impacts case resolution, while also reflecting on the illicit and speculative practices around digital scams. The article shows that, at times, the boundaries between fraud and legitimate financial practices become blurred and, as such, suggests that the increase in scams is intrinsically linked to the acceleration of financialisation, driven in part by profits in the credit market. This dynamic, coupled with the search for new lines of credit, has resulted in a further increase in fraudulent activities in the digital economy.