16 January, 2020
White-Collar Crime and Businesses
The white-collar crime is referred to as criminal activities that do not involve strict violence, but they involve stolen money, theft of property, or other actions based on financial motives. Contemporary businesses around the United States of America report and file diverse white-collar activities to the FBI. On average, the companies tend to lose 6% of their annual income to the crimes committed by their workforce and mid-level managing teams. It is observed that managers attempt to commit white-collar crimes four times more when compared with employees at low-level of organizational hierarchy. Are white-collar crimes taking place in your business?
The, you need to look for signals and instantly spot them to mitigate the potential financial risks.
The best practical approach to spot them is to familiarize yourself with typical forms of white-collar crimes so you can observe if your organization is being victimized or not. If you think the answer is yes, then you need to take a further approach to stop them immediately. Discuss with a firm attorney and share what your witnesses experienced. The lawyers at Fairfax Criminal Lawyer have extensive knowledge and research in defending the cases of those who have been wrongfully accused of white-collar activities. They also tend to support the parties who at first place, reported these crimes to the business. The criminal attorneys fight well to advertise the personal interests of the businesses.
It is significant for a company to protect itself against white-collar crimes to maximize its profitability and ensure long-term growth. The top management teams need to be watchful. Even the most trustworthy employees have the potency to commit serious crimes and harm the goodwill of a business. Therefore, it is sensible to conduct detailed background checks of employees and adopt a consistent strategy of check and balance to monitor the workforce.
Most Common Types of White-Collar Crimes
In today’s time, white-collar crime is committing every day. Sometimes, the illegal actions go detected, and other times, the perpetrator is undiscovered. However, there are other cases as well, when an offender is defending for the crime that hadn’t been committed by himself instead of someone who actually committed it. Here I’ve mentioned a few white-collar crimes that you can spot when a person, an entity, or schemed organizations employ:
Extortion:
Extortion is the process of acquiring money through threatened force or pressure. The oppressor attempts wrongful acts to gain wealth, money, or property from a business entity. He threats the victim’s person, their family, or friends. The violence or property damage is usual under extortion cases. The unfavorable government actions and probable reputational harm also revolve around extortion. In businesses, the cases of extortion involve paying protection money to local mobsters or well-schemed cyber extortion organizations targeting hundreds of working units. The persecutors hack the operative setups of businesses and tend to blackmail them into gaining a huge amount. There should not be an extortion cost of doing business. Hence, business owners are advised to ask for legal assistance to carefully deal with the unfortunate events of extortion.
Receiving Stolen Property:
In the business community, the receiving of stolen property/goods revolves around the concept when a person intentionally receives, retains, or dispose of property of other parties, when he knows that the property or goods were forcefully obtained through the commission of a theft offense. For example, an employee tends to steal the stock from his workplace and sell it to another person, and that person already knows this is a stolen and he still purchases from the employee. There are state laws available to be charged against the crime of receiving stolen property, stocks, or goods. When a person has reasonable causes to believe that the property is stolen, then the person should be guilty of receiving and retaining that property.
Credit Card Fraud:
In credit card fraud, a person is financially motivated and intended to commit defraud by using a credit card that has been canceled, lost, or stolen but it holds some value. The criminal can use the number of a credit card without even the possession of the actual card. He attempts to steal the identity of the credit card owner and it’s a threating form of fraud because of identity unification. This fraud can badly affect the consumer credit card industry. Credit card fraud is difficult and complex to prevent because it is growing at a rapid pace. One should always be careful with his credit card dealing; if he notices any vague transactions in a financial statement, then he should immediately report to criminal law attorney.
Health Care Fraud:
It is a common type of white-collar fraud and typically refers to the deceptive actions committed in the health industry. It encompasses health insurance fraud, medical fraud, and drug fraud. It occurs when an entity or a group of individuals deceives or cheat government health care programs and the insurers. This fraud can be done in a variety of ways and a person engaged in this seek new approaches to manipulate the other party or circumvent the state laws. The usual types of health fraud include billing for services that have not been rendered, Upcoding of services or items, false or duplicate claims, and charging excessive for unnecessary services.
Embezzlement:
This white-collar crime is the practice of wrongful withholding of assets, theft, or misappropriation of trust’s funds. For instance, when an employee misuses the funds that belong to his employer. Although that person is given the lawful possession of the company’s funds but he is not allowed to transfer the money into different accounts for his personal use. Under embezzlement, one or more persons who are entrusted of funds cannot do the conversion of assets unless the providers specify it. Otherwise, it will be considered a serious type of financial fraud.
Worker’s Compensation Fraud:
In workplaces, accidents can happen with the employees. Business is always on the line if its worker gets a work-related illness or injury. In this case, the compensation insurance programs help to reimburse the money for medical treatments that a worker had to tolerate. But, at present times, both the employees and employers can take advantage of health care programs. These frauds lead to higher insurance penalties or premiums. So, businesses and insurance companies need to protect worker’s compensation funds and avoid costly errors.
Bribery:
In Black’s Law Dictionary, bribery is defined as the offering, giving, and receiving of money to manipulate/influence the actions of an official person or authority, who is in charge of legal or public duties. This white-collar crime is unethical conduct to achieve individualistic goals or objectives. The bribery can take any form: rights in action, privilege, preferment money, goods, property, and land. It usually occurs in official departments, government, medical or health care industry, businesses, sports boards, and politics.
There is strict state legislation to prevent different sectors from the conduct of bribery.
Mail and Wire Fraud:
This white-collar crime involves fraudulent activities or schemes to cheat an individual or entity through the private or postal mail carrier services. It is the most common type of fraud than you can imagine. It consists of employment, financial, telemarketing, and sweepstakes frauds. In the USA, this fraud comes under the head of federal crimes and involves electronically transmitting confidential data or mailing something that is intended to harm the owners. Wire fraud covers a range of illegal activities and deceives via radio or TV communication.
Income Tax Fraud:
Income tax fraud is a deliberate or intentional attempt to defraud the IRS and avoid tax law. A person attempts to commit income tax fraud when he doesn’t file an income tax return purposely. When he is not willing to pay the due taxes or doesn’t want to report the income taxes received. He makes false or fraudulent claims to save tax money in his pocket. He prepares and presents files that have to offer incorrect information and false returns to mislead the authorities.
Insider Trading:
The insider dealing is an illegal exercise of trading shares, bonds, or securities in stock exchange markets to take advantage of confidential information for which access has been gained through wrongful attempts. It is the nonpublic information about the company. No insider is legally allowed to take benefits from it. Under legal insider trading, insiders of the company have been given the right to trade the stocks but, at the same time, they have to inform or report the company about that particular trade to the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission).
Financial Crimes:
Mostly, the financial crimes come under the head of white-collar frauds; when the convicts attempt to occur, different forms of frauds farmed on financial motives. Some of the financial sector frauds include money laundering, fraud at the state level, tax evasion, embezzlement, forgery, counterfeiting, terrorist financing, insurance fraud, and identity theft. In recent times, the anti-financial crime technology has made it faster and easier to gather, organize, and view the evidence regarding accounts or money transactions to catch a criminal instantly.
I'm Harry Wilson, a senior digital marketing consultant at Globex Outreach. Writing is my part-time hobby because I get to share my experience with the world. Professionally, I help map out a flawless digital marketing plan for the clients at my firm.
