Types of White Collar Crime

White collar crimes are crimes that are committed by a person or persons of middle or higher status within their occupation. These types of crimes are considered nonviolent. Generally, the trusted and valued employee commits this type of crime within a company. White collar crimes include insider-trading, conspiracy, embezzlement, fraud, forgery, money laundering, and a few others. These crimes are ones that people of a higher class perform because their occupations put them in a position in which they are able to execute these types of crimes. You would not find a poor black man committing crimes of this nature. He would not generally have the means to perform crimes of this type. It would be rare for you to find a person of higher class to commit street crimes such as assault, robbery, rape or other illegal acts. Younger people generally perform street crimes while middle aged or older people commit white collar crimes. Age does not happen to be the only way in which these crimes differ when generalizing who is committing these crimes. You can also say they are gender committed. This means that on a whole more men execute these types of crimes than women do. When you look at the opportunity in which one person is able to commit a white collar crime, we say they can use their employment to gain access to commit those types of crimes. An accountant has the ability to change the books or alter them if they are taking money from the company in which they are working. A chief executive officer of a company could give up information leading to the buying of stocks at lower prices when the price of the stock could rise. They could give this information to someone to buy stock for them or themselves. The way that most can get away with it is because they are holding a position high within the company with little or no supervision of anyone seeing what it is that they are doing. The people who are committing these white collar crimes are generally sticking to one of many categories. If an accountant is embezzling money, for example they are not going to try to get into insider trading within a company. A doctor or someone in the medical field has the capabilities to commit healthcare fraud. These types of actions can cost millions even billions of dollars a year to taxpayers and other people within companies where the fraud and other crimes were committed. Convicted of these types of crimes someone will say that it did not start at a large amount of money. More money and time are added each time they were able to get away with it. Before they knew it, the lies and deceit were long gone. There did not seem to be anything that outweighed the ability to keep taking the money. It really does not start out as a scheme to steal money but more often than not, it is someone charging money to the wrong account and getting away with it. Sarbanes-Oxley Act was created to help control and give law enforcement an opportunity to prosecute for these types of crimes. Congress put this law into effect to help investors feel more secure as to where their money was going and how if at all it was going to be protected. It was designed to help with accuracy of reporting. The companies that are affected by this act are public companies that are registered with the Security and Exchange Commission. It gives law enforcement a way in which they were able to hold someone accountable for white collar crimes. There was no longer going to be a position one could take of “I did not know that.” If the wrong figures are submitted then the CEO and CFO of a company can be fined or sent to prison. It does not matter if they willfully did it or not. No matter what the case they are held accountable. It was their position, which was to check, double check and recheck to make sure that there was no wrong doings going on within their company. Technology has played an important role in the ability for people to commit white collar crimes. Computers have made it easy for criminals to perform such crimes. When computers are used, anyone can simply transfer money to offshore accounts that can most often go undetected by law enforcement. People can easily misrepresent themselves to anyone when they are going through the computer. It is simple to make up another name in which you can run money under, purchase stock under as well as other things. It is rather easy for the best financial people to cross the line and hide profits which they can then in turn pocket for themselves. Cyber payments can make it easy to transfer money and you do not even have to be present to do so. Laws and regulations have not been specific in helping with these cybercrimes. Internet frauds, identity theft, attacks on websites have become more rampant than ever before. As the internet takes us further into the future, we find ourselves running out of ways in which we can protect our personal information from those trying to steal from us. It takes training for law enforcement to be able to help control these crimes and that takes more than what most police departments can afford or take on without costing taxpayers. No one wants to pay unnecessary fees for something that they do not believe can happen in their town so to speak. No one realizes that there can be someone committing these white collar crimes living right next door to him or her. As technology, gets more sophisticated it just means that hackers have to find other ways around securities. It does not take much for these people to manage to get around the securities. The fraud that people are using to prey on innocent people come in the form of an email for example stating they will receive money from the funds of a deceased person leaving them a portion of their fortune. All the person has to do is pay a few thousand in legal fees. That is put into a fund but never seen by an attorney or lawyer as that account goes to a member of the fraud. These frauds exist all over the internet. Some in the forms of jobs in which people are saying they are selling things from overseas and they request that you are the middle person. You are the person in which is sending money orders to fill orders that do not exist. The person is supposed to mail you a check but the check never comes and yet you are sending money orders to a person without receiving money from the start. It all comes down to we are all looking for means to survive in this economic depression and it makes it tough when people prey upon that. We all seem to hope to get something with as little work as one has to. When someone is in financial ruin, that person will do nearly anything to find a way to get by. Even though these crimes can cost billions of dollars a year unfortunately the person or persons committing these crimes rarely go to prison. Though they are made to pay fines in excess of millions at times, it does not mean they will serve time in prison. The media rarely finds out about it and it goes unreported to the FBI and other law enforcements as much as possible. It takes the public to be educated before there is going to be any big differences on how these crimes are reported and dealt with. Computer crimes should be easy to deal with when it comes to fraud if we go back to the words “buyers beware.” Keep yourself and your information protected as much as you can on your own. You are your best defense against identity theft.
References
Sox, O. (2006). Sarbanes-oxley basics. Retrieved from http://www.sox-online.com/basics.html

Antar, S. (2006, May 10). A convicted felon speaks out. Retrieved from http://www.whitecollarfraud.com/946562.html

White collar crime the legal definition. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/White-Collar Crime

Investigations of cybercrimes. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.neiassociates.org/cybercrime.htm