The scope of white collar crime is broad and inventive individuals are creating new forms of white collar crime on a daily basis. However, in the vast majority of cases, these crimes happen through deceit that leads to someone’s financial enrichment.
If you’ve been accused of a white collar crime, you may want to aggressively defend yourself against the charges to reduce the chances of conviction and/or the severity of punishments.
What kinds of white collar crimes exist?
White collar crimes often involve an individual working in a professional capacity who breaches the trust of his or her employers to financially enrich him- or herself. However, other forms of white collar crime include insurance fraud and tax evasion. Here are three examples of common white collar crimes:
- Embezzlement: This crime involves taking money from a financial account that you are entrusted with, and transferring the money to a personal account, or another account under your control. Sometimes embezzlement involves the taking of small sums of money over time so that it doesn’t get noticed. Other times, it involves larger sums of money.
- Tax evasion: When an individual purposefully underreports his or her income to pay less in taxes, it constitutes tax evasion. There are many types of tax evasion that people engage in, and, in all cases, it involves the end-result of paying less in taxes than you’re legally obliged to pay.
- Money laundering: Money laundering involves taking illegally earned or obtained money and making it appear like you obtained it legally. You might mix the illegal money with clean money, or create a fake business that makes it appear like you obtained the money by providing various services.
Defend yourself carefully against white collar crime charges
A charge of white collar crime can ruin an individual’s professional career. As such, you need to defend against such an accusation carefully. Not only do you want to avoid or lessen the criminal punishments associated with a conviction, but you’ll want to reduce the chances of losing your job.
