Manhattan White Collar Crimes
White-collar crime is a criminal act in a business or professional setting with the end goal to be financial gains by illegal methods. White collar crimes are not violent crimes but they do cause losses for companies, investors and employees. White collar crimes offenses include fraud, theft and various other illegal activities.
Criminal Fraud
- Computer fraud: stealing bank information, credit cards and proprietary information from computers.
- Bankruptcy fraud: concealing assets, misleading creditors or illegally pressuring debtors.
- Healthcare fraud: accepting kickbacks, billing for services not performed, billing for unnecessary equipment and/or billing for services performed by a less qualified person. This fraud is committed in all areas of health care, including hospitals, home health care, ambulance services, doctors, chiropractors, psychiatric hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and nursing homes.
- Insurance fraud: falsifying, inflating or ''padding'' claims.
- Mail fraud: using U.S. mail to commit a crime.
- Government fraud: engaging in fraudulent activities in relation to public housing, agricultural programs, defense procurement, educational programs or other government activities, including bribery in contracts, collusion among contractors, false or double billing, false certification of the quality of parts and substitution of bogus parts.
- Financial fraud: engaging in fraudulent activities relating to commercial loans, check forgery, counterfeit negotiable instruments, mortgage fraud, check kiting and false applications.
- Securities fraud: manipulating the market and stealing from securities accounts.
- Telemarketing fraud: using the telephone as the primary means of communicating with the potential victims. Telemarketers use multiple aliases, telephone numbers, and locations; they frequently change their product line and sales pitch.
- Counterfeiting: printing counterfeit money or manufacturing counterfeit designer clothing, handbags and watches.
Theft
- Blackmail: demanding money in exchange for not causing physical harm, damaging property, accusing someone of a crime or exposing secrets.
Violation of Statutory Law
- Antitrust violations: fixing prices and building monopolies
- Environmental law violations: discharging a toxic substance into the air, water, or soil that harms people, property or the environment, including air pollution, water pollution and illegal dumping.
- Tax evasion: filing false tax returns or not filing tax returns at all.
- Kickbacks: compensating an individual or company in order to influence and gain profit. Kickbacks result in an unearned advantage, benefit, or opportunity, even if others are more qualified or offer prices that are more competitive. Kickbacks hurt business by interfering with the functioning of competition in the marketplace.
- Insider trading: trading stock or other securities with knowledge of confidential information about important events that is unavailable to the general public.
- Bribery: offering money, goods, services or information with the intent to influence the actions or decisions of the recipient.
- Money laundering: concealing income raised through illegal activity in order to evade detection. Illicit proceeds are laundered to appear as though the funds were generated through legitimate means.
- Public corruption: breaching the public trust and/or abusing of position by federal, state, or local officials, usually in connection with private sector accomplices. A government official violates the law when he asks or agrees to receive something of value in return for being influenced in the performance of his duties.
Defenses
White-collar crimes are governed by the general principles of criminal liability. Each crime requires a bad act, criminal intent and causation. Many of the defenses to white-collar crime are the same as those that apply to other crimes and include:
- Insanity
- Intoxication
- Incapacity (defendant was incapable of committing the crime)
- Duress (someone else caused the defendant to commit the crime)
- Entrapment
Entrapment
A common defense to white-collar crimes is entrapment, a situation where government personnel present the opportunity for the defendant to commit a criminal act that he or she otherwise would not have committed. The defendant argues that he or she would have had no tendency to commit the crime without government enticement. A judge will look at the situation through the defendant's eyes in deciding whether the defendant was entrapped. To succeed on an entrapment defense, the defendant must prove that, first, the government induced them to commit the crime and, second, that they had no predisposition to committing it.
Contact a Manhattan Criminal Defense Attorney
Resources
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The Sentencing Project
A national leader in the development of alternative sentencing programs and in research and advocacy about criminal-justice policy.
Prison Policy Initiative
The Prison Policy Initiative conducts research and advocacy about incarceration and criminal-justice policy.
Equal Justice, USA
"Capital Defense Handbook For Defendants and Their Families" provides information and advice about death-penalty cases from the defense point of view.
ACLU: Prisoners' Rights
Resource provided by the American Civil Liberties Union with information on national and state efforts to recognize and protect prisoner's rights.