It's been a business practice, certainly. And it's been part of law and lore since the dawn of history. The code of Hammurabi includes punishment for false witness: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3153879?origin=JSTOR-pdf

In Dante's Inferno, the penultimate (8th) circle of hell is for the fraudulent (the 9th and innermost is for traitors -- another form of fraud, if you like): http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_dante_hell.html