Reply #48: Regardless of what you investigated, there are many kinds of fraud. The wiki defintion of

[No Elephants]

fraud is deceiving a person in order to damage that person and that is undoubtedly what this woman did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud

You cite this "Many hoaxes are fraudulent, although those not made for personal gain are not technically frauds." Note, however, that there is a difference between "money" and "personal gain."

Moreover, definitions of fraud differ from one jurisdiction to another, and there is both criminal fraud, which you have been your bailiwick, and civil (non-criminal) fraud.

Quite a few civil actions are gounded in deception and they don't all involve money. Neither do all crimes, even though those may have been the only ones that you investigated.

This woman's actions involved more than one crime, whether or not she committed criminal fraud under California law, and probably more than one civil tort, not to mention garden variety lying. She may be able to square all that with her Christian beliefs on the ground that she is saving innocent babies, but she committed crimes and torts nonetheless.

P.S. I just did a quick google of criminal fraud under California law. There are quite a few provisions and not all of them involve personal gain of any kind. For instance, falsifying a medical record is fraud under California law, period. Why you did it and what you may or may not have gotten from it is irrelevant. That fact that you did it alone is a crime.