Published Article

ABSTRACT Our modern society demands a degree of connectivity between citizens, businesses, financial institutions and governments that must cross political and cultural boundaries. Digital technology provides this connectivity and gives its users many valuable benefits. But at the same time, it provides a rich environment for criminal activity, ranging from vandalism to stolen identity to theft of classified government information. One of the modern crimes against property and ownership in the cyber-space is computer fraud. Despite being modern, the aforementioned crime has its roots in the principles of religious jurisprudence. In some cases, this crime is compatible with traditional regulations, and that is, when the computer is considered as a crime instrument. Some of the computer frauds that take place in the context of electronic exchanges are considered as crimes as per the E-commerce Law (approved in 2003) of Iran. However, these regulations are flawed and until recent years, there was no comprehensive law in this regard. After so many years of legal vacuum, legislation of the Computer Crime Act 25/05/2009 led to partial settlement of the problems arising thereby. The present study intends to investigate computer fraud according to Iran’s Computer Crime Act and also elaborate upon those international instruments in this regard. Key Words: fraud, computer fraud, computer crimes, cyber crimes, classic fraud