In the late 1930′s White collar crime was defined as ¨any criminal act committed by a person of respectable origins and high social status in the course of his occupation.¨ Today experts believe this definition is a little too narrow. Now a White collar crime is any crime that deals with finance, fraud or money that is committed by a respectable person. In general white collar crimes are non violent crimes committed in the corporate world, like that of racketeering anti trust crimes.
Racketeering has been around for a long time and usually involves large crimes involving organizations. This may take the form of an organizations monopolization of a product, an employee force, gambling, prostitution, computer gambling, etc. The following is a list of different types of white collar crimes that occur today.
• Insurance fraud
• Tax evasion
• Racketeering anti trust
• Credit card fraud
• Computer and internet fraud
• Bribery
• Counterfeiting
• Embezzlement
White collar crimes are usually non violent but they are still very serious and cost the nation close to $300 billion. Nickels private investigations has seen a wide variety of punishments for this type of crime. Fines can go into the millions of dollars, as those that were imposed recently on the spam king, and can also include long periods of jail time.
White collar crimes are not always done simply by individuals. In fact, racketeering anti trust crimes are usually committed by large companies, as in the Enron situation. In situations like this, it is not only the corporation that is affected but their families, and other employees who don’t even know about the crime. Often these people find themselves financially hurt by criminal offenses that their company took.
If you are accused of a white collar crime then it’s important that you hire a good criminal attorney and the right private investigator to prove your case.
