Fraud is the British white collar crime and it has a long and dishonourable history in Britain. Business fraud was last year estimated at 3.3 billion pounds and to combat the sophistication of frequently intelligent and ingenious fraudsters, the Serious Fraud Office was set up in April 1988 to handle frauds involving more than five million pounds. Since then, a long list of high-profile failures (or at the very least, strategic blunders) has called the purpose of the SFO into question. The author looks at cases including those of Guinness, Blue Arrow, Asil Nadir, Barlow Clowes and Roger Levitt.