This thesis uses quantitative analyses to investigate the non-financial effects of fraud on victims in the United States as they relate to the social class status of victims. Thus far, only one other study (Morgan 2021) has investigated the non-financial (socioemotional) effects of fraud on victims in the United States, and the role of social class was not considered in the analysis. Using the analytical lens of Leonard Pearlin’s Social Stress Theory, informed by the body of research on middle class financial precarity, this thesis hypothesizes that middle class status compounds the stresses that result from fraud, rather than mitigating them. A series of chi-square and regression analyses reveal support for Social Stress Theory, but not for middle class financial precarity.
