The history
of white collared crime only dates back to 1939. The term first became
coined and mainstreamed in 1939 by Edwin Sutherland, in attempt to differentiate
between white collar and street crime. Mr. Sutherland originally presented
his theory in an address to the American Sociological Society in attempt
to study two fields, crime and high society, which had no previous empirical
correlation. He defined his idea as "crime committed by a person
of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation."
White-collar
crime is typically defined to include twenty-five offenses. The most
common, and with the highest public awareness are bank fraud, blackmail,
bribery, counterfeiting, extortion, embezzlement, forgery, insider
trading, money laundering, racketeering, and property crimes.
Antitrust Violations:Infractions
of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. 1-7) and the Clayton Act (15 U.S.C.
12-27) constitute antitrust violations. The goal of antitrust
laws is to shelter trade and commerce from price fixing, monopolies,
etc., and to foster competition.
Bribery: The offer of
money, goods, services, information or anything else of value,
which is presented with the intent of influencing the actions,
opinions, or decisions of the taker.
Within the past year,
the issues of corporate fraud and white-collar crime have run rampant
through the press. With high profile scandals being uncovered in several
multimillion-dollar companies such as Enron, Qwest Media, Tyco, Worldcom,
and Adelphia Cable, the problem of white-collar crime has never been
so highly visible in our society.
Law enforcement cannot
be fully blamed for the medium effort expended on pursuing white-collar
criminals. In fact, between 1997-1999, only 3.8% of the cases brought
to the FBI we white-collar related. There are many explanations for
why white-collar crime is so often unreported even when detected,
and many of them have to do with the questionable ethics, or lack
thereof, within the business profession.
