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White collar crime and corporate crime essay
Punishment and white collar crimes
Punishment and white collar crimes
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Martha Stewart was charged with securities fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and civil charges. She had made false statements to F.B.I., SEC, and investors. She withhold information from these organizations about the selling of her stocks with in the company of ImClone. She was convicted and sentence to five months in prison, five months of house arrest, and a full two years of probation.
White Collar Crime
The Martha Stewart case is consider a white collar crime. Due to the fact, Ms. Stewart is the CEO and face of the company makes this a white collar crime. According to the text book, a white collar crime is define as illegal action that is committed by someone who has a high status attach to their name (Goode, 2015, pg.138). White collar criminals are usually people who have a wealthy amount of money and have abundant amount of authority. For example, in the recent news and reality television show Dance Moms (lifetime) Abby Lee Miller is charged of fraud and violating currency reporting laws for her dance studio company. There are other case that have made the headlines through the years, but white collar crime does not have to be affiliate with a celebrity.
Stigmatized for her Crime
Martha Stewart did not get stigmatized for her crime. Usually high profile people who commit a
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She has accomplish many projects such as adding products, books, televisions shows, and other things to her name. One could say that prison help her company with media and the right mind set to help get her company back on top after the scrutiny she went through during this case. The time in prison had was a huge impact on her company because it allow her to think about the different perspectives she wanted for her company in the future. This made the transition from prison to her business easy because she already had a plan ahead of her. Today she is worth more than nine hundred million
2 Companies are exposed to crimes either from the inside, or the outside. White-collar crime is a complication; harming companies in our society, which costs millions. An example of a white-collar crime would be the Ford Pinto case. When gas prices were rising in the United States, people started to search for economical cars.
Stewart was convicted of conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice in 2001, and for using insider information to sell shares of the company ImClone Systems. This type of fraud damages the confidence of investors, it makes them perceive the lack of equality.
On December 28, the day after Stewart sold her shares, ImClone publicly announced that the Erbitux application had been rejected. Shortly after ImClone's announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission "SEC" and the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York launched investigations into trading in ImClone stock in advance of the announcement to the public of the news about Erbitux. During the investigation, each defendant was questioned twice. Martha Stewart was interviewed at the office of the United States Attorney on February 4, 2002 and by telephone on April 10, 2002. Among those present during Stewart's interviews were Special Agent Catherine Farmer of the FBI and Helene Glotzer, a lawyer with the SEC's Enforcement Division.
In May 2002 the SIPC trustee filed a 255.3 million lawsuit against the Madoff family. Madoff company BLMIS ended on December 11 2008 when he was arrested for stealing his customer’s money. For more than 50 years Madoff s company money from people and on June 29th 2009 he pleaded guilty "to 11 counts Complaint and was sentenced as a hundred fifty years in prison"(Lewis, 2013
Corporate executives like Kenneth Lay and Martha Stewart were taken before the court for poor ethical practices. Leaders of pharmaceutical companies have been found knowing about distribution of unsafe products. Leaders at Coke Cola were found guilty of racial discrimination and leaders of cruise ships fined for dumping waste in the ocean. News reports exposed Wall Street analysts who created phony reports, made profits, and pushing worthless stocks, left citizens questioning if they should invest their money. Leaders of the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, were cited for practices of employee abuses and gender discrimination.
White collar crime is a term created by Edwin Sutherland in 1939 that refers to crimes committed by people of higher social status, companies, and the government according to the book “White-Collar Crime in a Nutshell” by Ellen Podgor and Jerold Israel. White collar crimes are usually non-violent crimes committed in order to have a financial-gain (Podgor and Israel 3). A very well known white collar crime that has even been taught in many history classes is the Watergate scandal. This is a white collar crime that was committed by government authorities. Watergate was a crime that shocked the nation.
She received a huge amount of money from the channel for the show. Per season she charged $220,000. It was her television debut. Since then she appeared on various television projects. She has her own fashion line. Her collection includes swimwear, Sportswear, and even evening wear. She even has her own Jewelry line. She has launched her own Beverage line also.
There is a myth that there is great tolerance towards the existence of white collar crime, but this is not true. It
Today, worldwide, there are several thousands of crimes being committed. Some don’t necessarily require a lethal weapon but are associated with various types of sophisticated fraud, this also known as a white-collar crime. These crimes involve a few different methods that take place within a business setting. While ethical business practices add money to the bottom line, unethical practices are ultimately leading to business failure and impacting the U.S. financially.
Why does white collar and corporate crime tend to go undetected, or if detected not prosecuted? White collar and corporate crimes are crimes that many people do not associate with criminal activity. Yet the cost to the country due to corporate and white collar crime far exceeds that of “street” crime and benefit fraud. White collar and corporate crimes refer to crimes that take place within a business or institution and include everything from tax fraud to health and safety breaches. Corporate crime is extremely difficult to detect for many reasons.
Marilyn Price and Donna Norris” (Perri, J.D., CFE, CPA, 2011, p. 23). Even though white collar crimes do not seem as violent as someone that commits murder there is still major damage done. For example, a fraud victim goes through a lot of hardship. They can be harassed, have their identity stolen, and lose everything. This, in many cases, can be looked at as a serious crime.
Although many of her actions were parallel with fellow manager in General Accounting Troy Nordmand’s, he did not receive a prison sentence due to the fact that he attempted to leave the company (although Vinson did initially plan to resign). Conversely, Vinson was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home detention. One particularly interesting aspect of Betty Vinson’s case is the inclusion of her concerns over taking home pay and having health insurance, in addition to the fact that she had a positive reputation and was known for doing “anything you told her”. While it is normal to have concerns over job security, the emotional appeals in her situation add a different side to the story. One could argue that she is a victim -- she could have been targeted due to her reputation, or that fear drove her to do things she otherwise would not have considered. The issue here, however, is that she facilitated the fulfillment of Sullivan’s requests and pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. As far as the case specifies, despite any superior’s knowledge of Vinson’s tendencies, she was not absolutely forced to do or not do anything. Because she committed the crime and pleaded accordingly, the criminal charges and consequent sentencing was both expected and
Stewart did afterward was illegal. She lied about knowing the fact that the Waksal family was selling their shares and falsified the phone message log before having second thoughts and had her assistance restored the original message. Furthermore, she jointly collaborated an untruthful story with her broker to indicate that there was a stop order to sell the stock at $60 per share (SEC, 2003).
This case illustrated that there were real consequences to white collar crime. In addition to paying the fifty million dollar fine, he relinquished another fifty million dollars of his illegal trading profits. (He still had millions remaining, however, from his illegal gains.) His actual prison sentence was three years, yet he served only twenty-two months in the federal prison at Lompoc, California, which was known to have a “country-club” atmosphere.
White-collar crimes and organizational structure are related because white collar-crimes thrive in organizations that have weak structures. According to Price and Norris (2009), the elites who commit white collar-crimes usually exploit weaknesses in organizational structure and formulate rules and regulations that favor their crimes. Makansi (2010) examines case studies to prove that white-collar crime is dependent on organizational structure. For example, the financial crisis that Merchant Energy Business faced in 2001-2002 occurred due to the liberal Financial Accounting Board, which failed to provide a standard model of valuing natural gas and fuel. Moreover, a financial crisis that rocked the securitization market in 2008 was due to fraudulence in the pricing of securitization products. These examples ...