Final answer:
Fraud involves intentional misstatements or deceptive manipulations of financial statements and is considered to be true. Identity theft is a form of fraud where personal information is used without permission to commit financial crimes. Statistical fraud is the misrepresentation of data to falsely support a hypothesis.
Step-by-step explanation:
Fraud is the term that is indeed used to refer to intentional misstatements or deceptive manipulations of financial statements. The statement is true. The purpose of such misstatements is to provide investors, stakeholders, and other users of financial statements with a false impression of the financial health of a company. This can include acts such as inflating revenue, understating expenses or liabilities, or using other deceptive accounting practices to mislead readers of the financial report.
Additionally, identity theft, sometimes referred to as 'True-name Fraud', is a severe issue where criminals wrongfully obtain and use a person's personal and financial information without their permission. This form of fraud may also have financial implications akin to those of financial statement fraud, but identity theft extends beyond the corporate world into the personal lives of individuals. Criminals can drain bank accounts or incur significant debt in the victim's name, causing financial ruin.
In the field of statistics, statistical fraud occurs when researchers purposely misrepresent data to support a hypothesis or claim. This can diminish the credibility of the research and mislead those who rely on the findings. Methods of statistical fraud may include ceasing data collection once favorable results are achieved, or otherwise manipulating data to mask the true outcome of a study.