White Collar Crimes

Submitted By danitawilson1
Words: 919
Pages: 4

Running Head: Consumer and Corporate Fraud

White Collar Crimes
Danita Wilson
Kaplan University

CJ510
Professor S. Dunker
September 6, 2012

Fraud has become a large part of the United States makeup of white collar crimes. It seems fraudsters have a reputation of gaining someone’s trust and then stealing their money. Consumer and Corporate fraud has become more popular as the economy plunges downward. Consumer fraud covers quite a few areas of fraud as do corporate fraud. Understanding how these fraudulent actions can take place can help potential victims from getting taken advantage of. Corporate fraud has branched out to different areas in different ways by any means necessary to commit the crime such as: telephone, mail, email and the internet. The criminals work to gain victim’s trust and when the criminals have the victims hooked; they ask the victim for money; then the scammer take it and run. One consumer fraud scam is advance fee/prepayment scam. This scam has a phony loan company representative use authentic-looking documents, emails, and websites to appear legitimate. These scammers charge fees in advance of making loans. The victims end up paying the fees but their loans never go through. Before the victims realize what’s going on the scammers are long gone. The scammers sometimes regularly change the name of their “business” to avoid law enforcement. This type of fraud is an expanding problem on both sides of the Canada – U.S. boarder (www.crimes-of-persuasion.com). Thousands of victims are losing money every day to scammers operating beyond our respective boundaries. Between the two boarders it is hard to apprehend the scammers in the U.S. because they are in Canada, just out of reach of U.S. authorities. The same is said about Canadian scammers. They are in the U.S. just out of reach of the Canadian authorities. It seems the only way to bring these scammers to justice is by these two countries coming together to combat this problem. The federal mail and wire fraud statutes cover the full range of consumer fraud, stock frauds, land frauds, bank frauds, insurance frauds and commodity frauds, blackmail, counterfeiting, election fraud and bribery (www.americanbar.org). The Mail Fraud Statute, 18 U.S.C. 1341, provides criminal sanctions for those who: 1) engage in a scheme or artifice to defraud; 2) with intent to defraud; and 3) using the mail to further the fraudulent scheme (www.americanbar.org). Corporate fraud is defined as an individual or company that does activities in a dishonest or illegal manner, which is difficult to prevent and even harder to catch (www.investopedia.com). According to the IRS corporate fraud encompasses violations of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and related statutes committed by large, publicly traded or private corporation, and/or by their senior executives (www.businessweek.com). By creating effective policies, a system of checks and balances and physical security, a company may limit the extent to which fraud can take place (www.investopedia.com). Fraud must be proved by showing the defendant’s actions. Those actions involve 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; and 5) injury to the alleged victim as a result (www.investopedia.com). According to the FBI corporate fraud cases started increasing in 2011 and are steadily increasing as the months pass. Corporate fraud remains one of its “highest priorities” and that its agents in 2011 pursued about 726 such cases that included