Definition
To defraud is to deprive another person of property, money, rights, or any legally cognizable interest through fraud, deceit, or artifice. The term is primarily verbal — it describes the act of committing fraud against a specific victim — and it appears most often in criminal statutes, civil fraud claims, and the law of contracts and fiduciary duty.
The core of defrauding is intentional wrongdoing directed at another's legal interests. A person who defrauds does not merely make a mistake or breach a contract; they act with the purpose of obtaining something to which they are not entitled, or of depriving another of something to which that other person is. The means may include false representations, concealment of material facts, manipulation, trickery, or any device calculated to deceive.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To obtain money or property from a person by fraud; to swindle. Also, more broadly, to deprive.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To deprive of some right, interest, or property by a deceitful device; to withhold from wrongfully; to injure by embezzlement; to cheat; to overreach.
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned, but the legal usage is broader in one important direction: courts and statutes have extended defraud beyond property and money to include the deprivation of intangible rights, honest services, and governmental interests. Ordinary usage focuses on tangible loss through swindling; legal usage reaches conduct that causes no direct financial harm but still corrupts a right or relationship protected by law.
Common Confusion
DEFRAUD vs. FRAUD: Fraud is the noun describing the scheme, the wrong, or the cause of action. Defraud is the verb describing what the perpetrator does to the victim. A person commits fraud; they defraud another person. In research, this distinction matters because statutes may criminalize one formulation and not the other, and pleading requirements attach differently to each. Anderson's Dictionary of Law routes the reader from DEFRAUD directly to FRAUD, treating the verb as definitionally dependent on the noun — a useful reminder that the elements of fraud underlie any analysis of defrauding.
DEFRAUD vs. EMBEZZLE: Embezzlement is a specific method of defrauding in which property lawfully entrusted to a person is wrongfully converted. All embezzlement involves defrauding, but not all defrauding is embezzlement. Conflating the two creates problems in statutory interpretation, particularly where criminal statutes enumerate specific offenses and courts must determine which conduct a legislature intended to reach.
Why It Matters in Research
The breadth of the term is the central research problem. Because defraud is a verb that takes its content from fraud doctrine, its meaning shifts across civil, criminal, and regulatory contexts. In a civil complaint, to defraud typically requires proof of the established elements of fraudulent misrepresentation. In a federal criminal statute, the word has been interpreted expansively — most consequentially in the wire fraud, mail fraud, and Section 371 conspiracy contexts, where courts have held that schemes to defraud need not target money or property but may reach intangible rights.
Researchers working in historical sources should be aware that the intangible-rights extension is a twentieth-century development, accelerated by federal appellate decisions and periodically checked by the Supreme Court. Pre-twentieth-century dictionary definitions, including those in Bouvier and the first and second editions of Black's, reflect the narrower property-centered understanding. Applying those definitions to modern federal fraud statutes without accounting for doctrinal development will produce errors.
The term also appears in a wide range of statutory contexts beyond the obvious fraud offenses: fraudulent transfer law, tax statutes, securities regulation, and consumer protection frameworks all use defraud or its cognates. Each statutory context may supply its own gloss. Researchers should resist reading one context's definition into another.
When the counterparty is the United States government, a distinct body of law applies. The conspiracy statute at 18 USC 371 criminalizes conspiracies to defraud the United States in a manner that encompasses interference with governmental functions even when no property loss is alleged. This is a distinct and expansive usage that requires separate analysis.
Historical Dictionary Support
The major historical dictionaries agree on the core: to defraud is to cheat or trick another, depriving them of something rightfully theirs through deceit or artifice. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier converge on this formulation, and Bouvier adds the specific dimension of withholding what is justly due — capturing cases where the wrong lies in retention rather than active taking.
Bouvier's reference to 12 Barb. 186 is notable in pointing toward early case law that grounded defraud in the concept of rightful entitlement, not merely physical dispossession. This framing anticipates later judicial expansion toward intangible rights, though the historical dictionaries themselves do not develop that trajectory.
Anderson's direction to see FRAUD rather than defining defraud independently is a minor editorial choice with substantive implications: it confirms that the verb carries no independent doctrinal content apart from the noun, and that researchers must anchor their analysis in fraud's elements.
What the historical sources collectively miss is any treatment of defrauding governmental entities as a distinct category, and any engagement with intangible rights. These omissions reflect the state of doctrine at the time of compilation, not error — but they are significant gaps for modern research use.
Jurisdictional Note
State criminal codes vary in how they define defraud or fraud-based offenses, and some states have codified specific elements or dollar thresholds that affect what conduct qualifies. Federal law, particularly in the mail and wire fraud context, applies a broader definition than many state courts recognize. Researchers working across jurisdictions should not assume that a federal definition of defraud maps onto a parallel state statute.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 USC 371), The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia