White Collar Crime: The Case Of Julian Assange

White collar crimes are fraudulent acts committed for the determined and selfish gain of finance. Three of the most common white-collar crimes are typically fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement. Fraud can happen in many different forms such as insurance fraud, tax evasion, and securities fraud. Fraud is the use of deceitful statements or untrue business deals. Money laundering is a scheme for criminals to hide their identity. Criminals will sometimes launder money through banks and corporations to keep their activities going strong while staying hidden from the prosecution. Embezzlement is the theft of funds belonging to a workplace or one’s employer. Any person working with finances within their workplace who has access or granted authority to make decisions has the potential to become corrupted.

In the case of Julian Assange, his crime that was committed against the U.S. would be considered economic espionage. Economic espionage is the theft of a trade secret with the intent to benefit any foreign government. Assange received classified documents from a U.S army soldier (formerly known as Bradley Manning) Chelsea Manning and proceeded to make them available for the public to view online on WikiLeaks. Mr. Assange is the owner of a website that publishes millions of documents

to leak classified military or government information from around the world. He does this to expose the back door handling that the public does not get to see, although it is highly illegal.
Julian Assange should face the some of the same espionage charges that Chelsea Manning received.

During the time that Chelsea stole the documents, she was going through a whole gender identity crisis. In the month of January which was when Manning began stealing the documents and storing them on her personal computer to send over to WikiLeaks when Manning had the chance. Between the months of January and April, Manning reached out to her supervisor explaining some of the things that have been troubling her for years and the help that she desperately craved. In April, Manning had an altercation with an Intelligence Specialist that led to her demotion and just days before being

arrested.
Assange believes that he has built a network of truth by keeping the documents and information as transparent as possible. Most government officials think Assange is committing terroristic actions against countries, people, and companies. In most cases, individuals would say that we should be privy to have this information and understand what is happening behind the curtains of our government military, and what our tax dollars are paying to protect. On the other hand, some information about what actions or sanctions the U.S. are using should not be plastered for the entire world to see. It makes our defense become vulnerable when we have to defend decisions to the entire public, whether or not they are morally right or wrong.