Abstract: This research is devoted to a comparative analysis of the criminal legal means of countering misconduct when receiving payments, a type of which is fraud in the field of scientific research in the performance of a state task. The subject of the work is the norms of foreign legislation. Research objective is to formulate the main approaches towards the regulation of the liability for fraud when receiving payments and comparable acts in legislation of foreign countries, and optimization of the Russian criminal legislation on liability for fraud, taking into account international rulemaking experience. The methodological basis of the work is a comparative legal method of research. The authors also used the methods of analysis and abstraction. The new results obtained include: highlighting the main approaches in formulating the encroachment in question in foreign legislation; the conclusion that the special norms on fraudulent activities with subsidies in the criminal legislation of individual countries are not fully comparable to the Russian counterpart of the norm (Article 159.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and therefore, the foreign experience in designing their dispositions is not very suitable for interpreting fraud in obtaining State grants in the Russian criminal law; attention is drawn to the need for a uniform definition of the punishability of general and special types of fraud, according to how this is reflected in the criminal legislation of foreign countries, differentiating responsibility for fraudulent abuse, depending on the sphere of commission, the subject and methods of criminal encroachment. The obtained results deepen the content of comparative criminal law and can be used in teaching criminal disciplines, as well as improving Russian criminal law.