White-collar crimes are non-violent criminal activities that focus solely on financial gain. They are usually committed by business people as well as government employees. However, with the current economic crisis, more professionals with access to various resources are likely to engage in white-collar crimes.
Types of white-collar crimes
There are various types of crimes that may prompt one to seek the services of a white collar crime attorney. Most of them involve some type of fraudulent financial transactions conducted to deceive people.
Below are some of the most common types of white-collar crimes.
- Embezzlement
Embezzlement is a criminal act that involves stealing property or money that belongs to another but was entrusted to you. A good example of this is where government officials take money that was set aside for a specific purpose and put it in their accounts without proper authorization.
- Security fraud
As earlier stated, white-collar crimes are common in company settings. With security fraud, the guilty individual, mostly an insider person, shares confidential information on stocks, bonds, shares, trades, as well as other company investments. This is, in most cases, a violation of their duties and obligations as employees or members of the company.
- Misrepresentation
Similar to security fraud, misrepresentation is a crime where an individual misrepresents a company’s sensitive information concerning finances and investments without knowledge, luring in investors. The investors then, use this information when making major company decisions, as well as financial ones.
In this case, the investors might sue the individual, prompting him to plead his case through the Schwartz Criminal Defense Firm.
- Tax evasion
It is not uncommon to hear of celebrities or wealthy people who tried evading taxes they owe to the IRS. The IRS regards tax evasion as any plan or scheme knowingly undertaken with the sole intention of not paying taxes. Just like the other crimes, this is an offense punishable by the law.
- Bank fraud
Bank fraud is one of the most popular white-collar crimes in the country. It is a criminal act that involves activities aimed at defrauding a bank for financial gain.
Some of these activities include commercial Ioan fraud, the use of fake checks, and fake money.
- Money laundering
Money laundering is a white-collar crime that is common with wealthy people. It is, basically, ‘cleaning’ dirty money.
This is where an individual acquires money illegally and converts it into a serious of transactions to make the money look like it was acquired from those legitimate transactions.
A practical example is where a drug dealer sells drugs then has a small hardware shop where the money is reinvested. All this is to make it appear that the money is acquired through the legitimate hardware business and not the drug trade and other unscrupulous endeavors.
- Bribery
Bribery is a type of criminal activity that involves offering money, property, or both to influence an individual’s action towards your gain.
- Bankruptcy fraud
This happens when a company or corporation lies about their financial situation to avoid paying any money they owe to creditors. It is also done when a company wants to keep an asset for themselves. An asset they owe to creditors.