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White collar crime and the criminal justice system
White collar crime and the criminal justice system
White collar crime and the criminal justice system
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“Lying, cheating, stealing. That's white collar crime in a nutshell” (fbi.gov). This crime is not a crime to be overlooked. White collar crimes can destroy families, businesses, and investors, individually or all at one time. White collar crimes include, wire fraud, institutional corrupting, social security fraud, and Ponzi schemes. Two white collar criminals, Marc Dreier and Bernie Madoff, go hand in hand and show the best examples of a white collar crime. Marc Dreier, famous for impersonating a Toronto attorney inside the attorneys own office, and stealing 380 million dollars from hedge funds, operated a Ponzi scheme (Borrough). Bernie Madoff, “was quietly running the largest hedge fund in the world, a fund that spread over forty nations and handled tens of billions of dollars” was also running the largest Ponzi Scheme. White collar crimes have progressively become more complicated. Without the trace of money, tracking down these scammers can be tough. It is important to know how the criminals like Dreier and Madoff are investigated and who investigates them to understand how white collar crimes work and the way they are caught is also very crucial to understanding white collar crimes.
Ponzi scheme got its name from Charles Ponzi, who promised investing in postal coupons, which back then a person could redeem for profit; Ponzi would be able to double their investments in three months (Markopolos 50). The investors were made to believe they would get huge profits. However the scheme collapsed and investors paid millions of dollars to Charles Ponzi. History only repeats itself. Therefore, Ponzi schemes work in typically the same way, but are even more complex today. Solely, the scheme is based on promis...
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...may have never been warned early on which is important in order to convict a perpetrator. However, with RICO laws it became easier to prosecute white collar criminals. It is important to have RICO laws, because very often there are crimes involving corruption (Bourgeois 1). Corruption is a huge part of the financial business and cracking down on these criminals is another step closer to saving another victim of fraud.
White collar crimes have been a big problem in the recent years. Marc Dreier and Bernie Madoff have had intensive investigations since when they were caught. The comprehension of how white collar crimes are conducted helps the law enforcement and the legislation to crack down on catching and preventing these criminals. Without such laws and enforcement agencies, white collar criminals would be stealing for innocent people’s money more rapidly.
The case that was provided in the Stanwick textbook provided information on the Madoff Ponzi scheme which is said to be the largest of Ponzi schemes in the world. This case was a very interesting case. It showed how Bernard Madoffs massive falsehood created disaster for around 13,600 clients. The impact from Madoff did not end with his clients being impacted but also people far and in between. Madoffs Ponzi scheme was controlled through his company that consisted of his family being the head of the company, friends, and employees. This scheme was a result for the recession that hit in 2008. The two sons of Madoff that were top employees claimed to have no connections with the Ponzi scheme.
The Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme is a well-known case and is known as one of the biggest Ponzi scheme’s. In summary the scheme occurred for many reasons that I will some up into 3 points; A lack in competency by regulatory agencies, a lack of regulation, and finally a breach in ethics by Bernie Madoff himself. To explain further, the regulatory agencies like the lawyers and SEC are supposed to prevent schemes such as this one from happening but because they lacked the skills to correctly assess the situation, interpreting the number of tips they had received regarding scheme that had been filed, and to act on those in an efficient manner. One of the tips was made by Harry Markopolos in 2000, of who correctly predicted that Madoff was guilty of fraud. Even after this tip from Markopolos, Madoff was not arrested until 2009. Many family members were also a part of the fraud along with some non-family members such as Frank DiPascali and a team known as the 17th floor team, who helped Madoff carry out his fraud. The idea behind Madoff’s fraud was that he would produce false statements of their investments and when people wanted to pull out their investments, the money wasn’t actually there, which rightfully rose more than a few eyebrows and ultimately led to his arrest.
The Eron Scandal is thought to be a standout amongst the most famous inside American history. An Eron of occasions is considered by numerous students of history and market analysts alike to have been an informal outline for a contextual investigation on White Collar Crimes. ("Enron Scandal Summary - Finance | Laws.com," n.d.)White Collar Crime is characterized as peaceful, monetarily based criminal action ordinarily attempted inside of a setting in which its members hold propelled training as to business that is thought to be prestigious. ("Enron Scandal Summary - Finance | Laws.com," n.d.) The accompanying occurred amidst the Enron Scandal. Eron had great success in their early years. Though the period regulation inside of a business and corporate
White collar crime is a term created by Edwin Sutherland in 1939 that refers to crimes committed by people of higher social status, companies, and the government according to the book “White-Collar Crime in a Nutshell” by Ellen Podgor and Jerold Israel. White collar crimes are usually non-violent crimes committed in order to have a financial-gain (Podgor and Israel 3). A very well known white collar crime that has even been taught in many history classes is the Watergate scandal. This is a white collar crime that was committed by government authorities. Watergate was a crime that shocked the nation.
Throughout history, the swindler has financially plagued society. Whether it is the get rich quick scheme or the carnival worker’s impossible challenge, people have been cheated out of uncountable sums of money. In the 1920’s a man named Victor Ludsig, posing as a French official, sold the Eiffel Tower to a gullible scrap ironworker for $50,000. Even today con artists are thriving using the Internet to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. This is a scheme made famous by a crook so successful that his name now graces the age-old fraud, the Ponzi scheme. Webster’s Dictionary defines Ponzi Scheme as
Bernie Madoff is one of the greatest conman in history. The Bernie Madoff scandal takes the gold as one of the top ponzi scheme in America. Madoff started the Wall Street firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, in 1960. Starting off as a penny stock trader with five thousand dollars, earned from his workings as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer, his firm began to grow with the support of his father-in-law, Saul Alpern, who helped by referred a group of close friends and family. Originally, his firm made markets by the National Quotations Bureau’s Pink Sheets. However, in order to compete with the bigger firms that were trading on the New York Stock Exchange floor, his firm started to use very intelligent computer software that help distributed their quotes in second’s rater then minutes. This software later became the NASDAQ that we know today. In December of 2008 Bernard Madoff confessed that he had embezzling billions of dollars from investors. It is estimated to have lasted nearly two decades, and stolen approximately $64.8 billion. On December 11, 2008 he was arreste...
One of the most recent white-collar crime involved Wells Fargo, a banking and financial services provider. In 2016 San-Francisco based bank Wells Fargo (WFC) employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts without permission of their customers. Opening about 1.5 million fraudulent deposit accounts and submitting 565,443 credit card applications allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales targets and receive bonuses. Consequently, customers were wrongly charged fees for accounts they did not know existed. In this business crime scenario, Wells Fargo involved to pay $185 million in fines and refund $5 million to affected customers. Also, around 5,300
Most people consider this crime to consist of CEO’s manipulating their way to making a large fortune. This of course, is true most of the time in high-profile cases. For example, in late 2001 Enron Corporation executives confessed to overstating the company’s earnings. This lead to artificially inflating what the company was worth and deceived the investors. It took some time to unravel all the fraud put behind this devious act but shows how sophisticated white-collar crime can be. Although it’s usually associated with upper management of corporations, people from all different levels and occupations can perform this crime ("How White-collar Crime Works").
White collar and corporate crimes are crimes that many people do not associate with criminal activity. Yet the cost to the country due to corporate and white collar crime far exceeds that of “street” crime and benefit fraud. White collar and corporate crimes refer to crimes that take place within a business or institution and include everything from Tax fraud to health and safety breaches.
For instance, any financial crime can leave individuals without shelter, money, or any reasonable quality of life due to the white collar offense. Therefore, white collar crime may not involve force, they still may affect people physically. As a matter of fact, white collar crime may result in a greater impact than street crimes. Nevertheless, we continue to operate on a dichotomy of beliefs regarding violent and non-violent crimes. In this paper, we will explore white collar crime as a non-violent crime. Those crimes under discussion are blackmail, bribery, embezzlement, and forgery. In addition, we will discuss violent crimes such as first degree, second degree, and manslaughter (Verstein,
Fraud is usually comprehended as deceptive nature calculated for advantage. And usually this kind of people might be called a fraud. According to the U.S. legal system, fraud is a particular offense with specific features. Fraud must be proved by showing that the defendant’s actions involved five separate elements: 1. A false statement of a material fact; 2. Knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue; 3. Intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim; 4. Justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement; 5. Injury to the alleged victim as a
...o disappear and tougher penalties need to be designed to handle white collar criminals. Without this white collar crime will continue and society will no longer be able to trust anyone with their finances. In turn, the economy will decline.
This case illustrated that there were real consequences to white collar crime. In addition to paying the fifty million dollar fine, he relinquished another fifty million dollars of his illegal trading profits. (He still had millions remaining, however, from his illegal gains.) His actual prison sentence was three years, yet he served only twenty-two months in the federal prison at Lompoc, California, which was known to have a “country-club” atmosphere.
White-collar crimes and organizational structure are related because white collar-crimes thrive in organizations that have weak structures. According to Price and Norris (2009), the elites who commit white collar-crimes usually exploit weaknesses in organizational structure and formulate rules and regulations that favor their crimes. Makansi (2010) examines case studies to prove that white-collar crime is dependent on organizational structure. For example, the financial crisis that Merchant Energy Business faced in 2001-2002 occurred due to the liberal Financial Accounting Board, which failed to provide a standard model of valuing natural gas and fuel. Moreover, a financial crisis that rocked the securitization market in 2008 was due to fraudulence in the pricing of securitization products. These examples ...
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of returns to previous investors from funds paid by new investors.With little or no legal earnings, Ponzi schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to operate. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when the operator is unable to recruit new investors ,when a large number of investors ask to cash out or if the operator disappears.These types of financial fraud have had a tremendous affect on the accounting profession, in the form of forensic accounting.