System and method for detecting fraudulent expenditure of electronic assets

An early detection and warning system for detecting fraudulent transactions involving non-transferable electronic assets, individual electronic assets being transferred from an electronic wallet during a transaction and then exhausted following use in the transaction, the early detection and warning system comprising:

• a sample database;
• and
• a computer programmed to perform the following steps:
• store a sample of less than all of the exhausted electronic assets in the sample database;
• evaluate the exhausted electronic assets stored in the sample database;
• mark an exhausted electronic asset as a bad electronic asset in an event that the exhausted electronic asset matches another of the exhausted electronic assets stored in the sample database;
• and
• identify an electronic wallet from which the bad electronic asset was transferred as a bad wallet.

An electronic fraud detection system for detecting fraudulent transactions involving electronic assets, the electronic fraud detection system comprising:

• an asset issuing unit to issue non-transferable electronic assets to asset holders;
• a recipient unit to receive the electronic assets that are used by the asset holders;
• and
• a fraud sampling unit to evaluate a sampled subset of less than all of the electronic assets received by the recipient unit to detect if the electronic assets have been used in a fraudulent manner, and in an event of detection, the fraud sampling unit identifying the asset holders responsible for fraudulent use of the electronic assets.

An electronic asset system comprising:

• an asset issuing unit to issue non-transferable electronic assets, the electronic assets being digitally signed by the asset issuing unit;
• a plurality of asset holders to store the signed electronic assets, each asset holder having an identification certificate containing a cryptographic signing key, the certificate being digitally signed by a certifying authority;
• the asset holders being configured to digitally sign the electronic assets when used with their corresponding signing keys;
• a recipient unit to receive the electronic assets used by the asset holders, the recipient unit being configured to verify the signatures of the asset holders that used the electronic assets and the asset issuing unit and to accept the electronic assets upon verification of the signatures;
• a fraud sampling unit to evaluate a sampled subset of less than all of the electronic assets received by the recipient unit to detect if the electronic assets have been used in a fraudulent manner, and in an event of detection, the fraud sampling unit using the asset holders' signatures on the fraudulently used electronic assets to identify bad asset holders that are responsible for the fraudulent use from among said plurality of asset holders;
• and
• the fraud sampling unit being configured to compile a list of the bad asset holders and to provide the list for storage on said plurality of the asset holders to prevent further use of electronic assets stored on the bad asset holders.

A system comprising:

• a plurality of electronic devices having corresponding certificates issued thereto, the certificates including a pair of public and private signing keys;
• individual electronic devices being configured to perform one or more transactions which involve digitally signing data using the private signing key;
• a sample and detection system to sample a subset of less than all transactions to determine whether the electronic devices are complying with a preset criteria, and in the event of non-compliance, the sample and detection system using the digitally signed data involved in the transactions to identify the non-complying electronic devices;
• and
• the sample and detection system generating a list of certificates which correspond to the non-complying electronic devices and are to be revoked to prevent the non-complying electronic devices from entering into further transactions.

A method for detecting fraudulent transactions involving electronic assets, the method comprising the following steps:

• issuing non-transferable electronic assets;
• storing the electronic assets in electronic wallets;
• spending at least some of the electronic assets contained on the electronic wallets by transferring the electronic assets from the electronic wallets to at least one recipient;
• extracting a sample of less than all of the spent electronic assets;
• detecting from the sample of spent electronic assets whether there is one or more bad electronic assets that have been spent in a fraudulent manner;
• and
• upon detecting a bad electronic asset, identifying an electronic wallet from which the bad electronic asset was spent.

A computer-implemented method for detecting fraudulent transactions involving non-transferable electronic assets used by electronic wallets, the electronic assets being considered as exhausted electronic assets upon use, the computer-implemented method comprising the following steps:

• extracting a sample of less than all of the exhausted electronic assets;
• evaluating the sample of exhausted electronic assets;
• marking an exhausted electronic asset as a bad electronic asset when the exhausted electronic asset matches another of the exhausted electronic assets in the sample;
• identifying an electronic wallet from which the bad electronic asset was spent as a bad electronic wallet;
• and
• compiling a list of bad electronic wallets.