What Is A White Collar Crime?

The short definition for a white collar crime is a non-violent crime that usually consists of deception by individuals such as a public official, business person, or of high authority. Paper trails are usually the smoking gun as far as evidence goes for the types of cases.  There is a debate as to what exactly defines a white collar crime. Some state it is defined as crimes such as embezzlement, forgery, fraud, counterfeiting, bribery, and perjury.

Bankruptcy fraud is one of the most common white collar crimes in today’s economic society. In order to achieve bankruptcy fraud the individual or company will need to hide certain assets when filing. The reason the government considers this as fraud is because the reports are inaccurate which can result in the individual or company receiving money back from creditors, which is stealing.  Unfortunately, this type of crime has been rising consistently and happening on a daily basis.

Another crime that is rising rapidly is computer crime. Computer crime is a broad term used for crimes committed such as identity theft or insider trading. Basically if the crime is committed using the computer and the internet it is a computer crime. These crimes have harsh penalties such as individuals serving prison time and the sentences can be quite long.

Who Commit White Collar Crimes?

Many of these kinds of criminals are regular individuals who ran into financial burden and used illegal and deceiving means to solve the problem.  The people committing these crimes are generally intelligent as it takes many complex tasks to commit the crime. Things such as offshore accounts are used to hide money from the government. In order to achieve this, the offender will need to do a series of transactions to hide the paper trail.

What Is The Punishment?

A majority of the punishments given for white collar crimes are high monetary fines, but it generally depends on the situation. Generally, it is a given that the offender will do some amount of jail time as well as pay the monetary fines.  The fines are set in place to reimburse those who have been wronged by the crime. The majority of offenders are wealthy and the fines are not difficult to pay. Unfortunately, there are those who are not financially stable and still have to pay the fines.  There have been a large number of well known business people and companies who have committed white collar crimes, but they are not the only people who do.

Additional Legal Guidance: Defense Attorney For White Collar Michael Lowe. Serving clients in Dallas, Texas.