Powerpoint on research paper

Manosalva 1

Manosalva 6

Maria Manosalva

Professor Martin

ENC1101

8 November 2020

White Collar Crime

A white-collar crime is well-defined as a nonviolent and financially driven crime that is committed by business professionals in the government. The main aim of committing this crime is to acquire or prevent losing funds, property, and services or to protect an individual or to maintain a business advantage. White-collar crimes have various characteristics, including how they are charged and defended in courts of law. These characteristics include being nonviolent, deception, criminal intent, grand jury, many defendants, involve corporations particularly, and involve parallel proceedings. White-collar crime is typically different from other crimes since they are nonviolent offenses. In committing the crime, it involves activities that use deception to acquire money, property, and other advantages or to cover up another criminal activity.

Criminal intent is significant in white-collar crimes since prosecutors are required to verify that a suspect's activities led to the offense's commission, and the defendant had intended for the offense to result in a particular benefit. Unlike in most cases where the work of investigating is done by law enforcement officials, in white-collar crimes, the prosecutor's primary investigative instrument is the use of the grand jury. The grand jury can give commands to force evidence from organizations that do not want to cooperate. The crimes also involve many defendants who conspire together to have committed the offense. Through numerous actors, it grants the prosecution with the chance to provide plea deals for petty offenders in exchange for the evidence against the major actors. In most instances, the crimes are corporate connected and contain charges against businesses and also officials of the companies. The proceedings of white-collar crimes are usually parallel in which offenders are charged with criminal and civil damages, and they encompass different federal enforcement agencies.

Most persons who commit white-collar crimes are well known, thus predicting these offenses is very hard. Although incentives offer a reasonable edge and reward to those workers who outshine, unreasonable incentives that prioritize short term accomplishments can lure employees to use unacceptable means. An incentive that rewards instant success may display a wrong message; thus, incentives must be appropriately planned and reward both long term and short-term accomplishment. Lack of stress on ethics arises when businesses are reluctant to enforce their ethics policies making the workers view them as optional. Viewing of ethics policies as optional generates an office culture of no accountability hence leading to broad acceptance of illegal behaviors (Berghoff, Hartmut, & Spiekermann).

If the reputation of the industry has the insight that a whole business functions outside the regulations, it makes people less probable to repel unethical activities. Any incorrect insight may make a business appear to be implicit in illegitimate conduct even if the particular business has not committed any offense. The belief of other people taking part in unlawful behavior may encourage other workers causing a bad status for the business, thus creating a response gap that makes more persons to break the law claiming to facilitate performance. The idea of victimless crimes implies when people commit white-collar crimes, and it gets unclear who they hurt. Most individuals can defend stealing from a large corporation since they do not attach their faces to that organization, thus making employees explain their deeds to be harmless and not actively affecting anybody. A slippery slope is when persons commit these types of offenses, not intending to break the law. Additionally, they may not be aware that they are committing offenses or taking part in activities that are dangerous to their corporation and themselves.

White-collar crimes can be in various forms, such as corporate fraud, money laundering, securities and merchandises fraud, identity theft, and health care fraud. Corporate deception not only does it cause major damages to investors but has the possibility of causing immense loss to the economy and the self-confidence of investors. When inspecting corporate fraud, the agencies concentrate on cases containing schemes of accounting self-dealing by company officials and justice impediment. Consequently, most cases pursued by the agencies consist of accounting schemes that are intended to mislead investors, auditors, and specialists about the actual financial state of an organization or business entity (Geldenhuys 25).

The financial performance of a company may remain artificially overestimated based on untrue performance displays offered to the investing public through the manipulation of financial information, the share price, and other evaluation dimensions of the company. The agency that carries out corporate fraud investigations majorly focuses on deception of financial information, self-dealing by business insiders, and fraud. Deception of financial data entails incorrect accounting entries, and misinterpretations of financial conditions, deceitful trades intended to expand proceeds and conceal losses, and unlawful dealings intended to avoid governing oversight (Young, & Mitchell). Self-dealing by business insiders entails insider tradeoff by transacting centered on substantial and non-public information, mismanagement of company property for individual gain, and personal tax violations connected to self-dealing. Fraud in relation to a legitimately operated shared hedge fund involves late trading and specific market timing structures.

Money laundering can be referred to as the process in which criminals hide their earnings and make them seem to have emanated from valid sources. Through money laundering, offenders are able to conceal their accumulated riches, evade prosecution, avoid taxes, raise taxes through reinvestment, and support other illegal activity. Money laundering can undermine financial organizations and systems' integrity and stability, prevent investment, and falsify capital flows internationally. The agencies that are dealing with the crime concentrate on how it is facilitated, aiming specialized launderers, main expediters, gatekeepers, and complicit financial organizations (Cliff). The criminals obtain the money through complicated financial crime, health care fraud, trafficking of persons, global and local public corruption, narcotics trafficking, and terrorism.

The methods used by the offenders to launder money comprise international trade, simulated money, real estate, precious metals, financial organizations, and third-party service suppliers, and they follow three main steps, namely placement, layering, and integration (“White Collar Crime”). Placement implies the original entry of the criminal's earnings into the financial scheme; layering involves the global shifting of money and incorporation takes place when the criminal's proceeds are refunded to the criminal from what looks to be valid sources. Securities and commodities fraud have been facilitated by the formation of complicated investment vehicles and an incredible rise in the sum of money being invested. The most common forms of securities and merchandises fraud structures include investment fraud, promissory note fraud, merchandises fraud, broker embezzlement, and manipulation of the market.

Nevertheless, most criminals always get away with white-collar crimes because of various reasons such as lack of proper resources to investigate the offenses since they take much time, robust inside controls that form obstacles to offense resulting in increased integrity of financial information, and the complexity and difficulty of making and proving a white-collar case. White-collar offenders also profit from institutionalized non-enforcement activities, governing policies, and lawful presentations, thus making it hard for the apprehension and prosecution of the criminals even when they carry out great harm to the public. Additionally, the offenses of honored persons in the perspective of valid companies and government offices regularly go unnoticed and unprosecuted because of the status, and political impact of the offenders. These offenders are usually protected from trial by the corporate law and their materialistic friends who have the same desires.

Works Cited

Berghoff, Hartmut, and Uwe Spiekermann. “Shady Business: On the History of White- Collar Crime.” Business History, vol.60. no. 3, 2018, pp.289-304., doi:10.1080/00076791.2018.1414735.

Cliff, Gerald, and April Wall-Parker. "Statistical analysis of white-collar crime." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. 2017.

Geldenhuys, Kotie. "The white-collar criminal." Servamus Community-based Safety and Security Magazine 113.8 (2020): 24-26.

“White-Collar Crime.” FBI, FBI, 3 May 2016, www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime.

Young, Mitchell. White-Collar Crime. Greenhaven Press, 2009.