Red Queen is an underrated analogy for so many things

Isn't it possible that financial crimes require discrete collaboration to avoid detection and a WFH situation prevents that from happening?

Or conversely that WFH makes financial crimes easier to commit and harder to detect so we're seeing a drop in detected incidents but the real numbers haven't changed?

Or that the there's another variable related to both that's causing it (like increased other vices that the article speculates)?

Or that this is just random chance and financial crimes were going to decrease during this time period no matter what?

I don't see any of those possibilities discussed in the underlying study. Though they do add several important disclaimers like all this data coming from a single firm in the UK, that they can't rule out trade volume as a driver (fewer trades means fewer crimes), and that WFH is still a relative novelty so behavioral patterns observed now might not be the same as those observed long term.

It's definitely an interesting finding but I wish they had addressed other causes more robustly instead of speculating that WFH was the cause per se.

The discrete collaboration thing seems likely to me. Evidence in insider trading cases not infrequently involves some way for Bob who knows about X to tell Jim, who trades something related to X before X is public. If Bob and Jim are in the same office building this can happen very casually, and it's extremely deniable whereas if Bob has to make a Teams call to Jim, now that's traceable and they might both be called to explain it.

Or perhaps the regulators and compliance officers meant to catch this stuff are less efficient out of the office?

Could be many things at this point. Way too early to call.

Plus, if negative behavior rubs off on you - wouldn't positive behavior? And if negative behavior rubs off on you better in the office vs. WFH, isn't that invalidating much of the argument most have for WFH?

Interesting crime is considered more efficient in-office but legit business isn't. And if the argument is culture I think it proves the point even more so.

I actually don't think WFH vs. in-office has much to do with this personally, but I find how the narratives change quite interesting.

It could not even be peer pressure, but just employees observing "hey, they can get away with this, if they can so can I"