Intrinsic fraud

Intrinsic fraud is an intentionally false representation that goes to the heart of what a given lawsuit is about, in other words, whether fraud was used to procure the transaction. (If the transaction was fraudulent, it probably does not have the legal status of a contract.) Intrinsic fraud is distinguished from extrinsic fraud (a/k/a collateral fraud) which is a deceptive means of keeping a person from discovering and/or enforcing legal rights. It is possible to have either intrinsic or extrinsic frauds, or both.