Businesses are vulnerable to a variety of internal and external crime that affects an organization’s performance. White-collar crime is a problem affecting businesses in the U.S. and around the world, costing billions of dollars in lost revenue every year. This paper will identify the types of employee crimes focusing on theft and the perpetrators; examine the impact to businesses and explore how business can deal with these offenses.
Mr. Smith places some extra highlighters and colored paper in his briefcase from the office’s supply closet for young Billy to use on his school project. Joanne has returned to her desk a 15 minutes late from her lunch break and is now surfing the web for airfare while on the phone long distance with her ailing grandmother to discuss plans to see her next month. Leonard supplements his hourly wage from working nights at the gas station by sneaking a couple scratch-off lottery tickets off the roll when the owner isn’t around. Mrs. Sara Swindle has been defrauding union members by diverting dues for her own use. Some of these examples may not necessarily be prosecuted or even discovered but nonetheless are examples of employee theft or white-collar crime.
Businesses face a myriad of internal threats for their success; the focus for this paper is theft; including theft of cash, inventory and equipment. Other types of employee crime include: writing company checks, money laundering, processing fraudulent invoices, payroll fraud, falsifying revenue reports, customer identity theft, intellectual property theft, overstated expense reports and credit card fraud (Bressler, 2011). Long before credit card fraud and identity theft, business owners dealt with theft. There is a no more clear exampl...
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...activity and its impact on business. The Entrepreneurial Executive, 16, 49-61. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.oak.indwes.edu/docview/885012416?accountid=6363
Kuratko, D. F., Hornsby, J. S., Naffziger, D. W., & Hodgetts, R. M. (2000). Crime and Small Business: An Exploratory Study of Cost and Prevention Issues in U.S. Firms. Journal Of Small Business Management, 38(3), 1-13. Retrieved from http://0-web.ebscohost.com.oak.indwes.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=56e11fdb-9475-4a64-9062-e0c057beace7%40sessionmgr11&vid=21&hid=15
Larson, E. (1985, January 14). Crook's tool: Computers turn out to be valuable aid in employee crime --- machines facilitate stealing, extortion and sabotage; west coast's robin hood --- you don't trust anybody. The Wall Street Journal, p. 1. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.oak.indwes.edu/docview/397889148?accountid=6363
The news article that I decided to do my assignment on is about a bank manager, Debra Anne Chapin, that embezzled 2 million dollars from a bank. The news article’s title is, “Former manager jailed for cheating bank out of $2M; Woman used cash to pay bills, gamble and feed her cocaine habit.” The crime took place in Calgary between June 1, 2006 and June, 30 2008. This embezzlement is a classic case of white collar crime and demonstrates numerous criminological theories.
White-collar crime is the financially motivated illegal acts that are committed by the middle and upper class through their legitimate business or government activities. This form of crime was first coined by Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” (Linden, 2016). Crime has often been associated with the lower class due to economic reasons. However, Sutherland stressed that the Criminal Justice System needed to acknowledge illegal business activity as crime due to the repercussions they caused and the damage they can cause to society (Linden, 2016). Crime was prevalently thought to only be
The installment of new security could even be a problem, for people who operate these new security systems could also be a potential thief. There is an approach among many enterprises that it is simpler to easily excuse the employee who committed the offense, instead of dealing with the law and the officers; and follow through with the money and time by prosecuting in order to seek restitution. Sometimes the firm does not to acquire the negative publicity that has to do with the internal offense, especially when their reputation is predominant to their company model. White-collar crime is often categorized as a crime without a victim, damaging only large, objective corporations. Recent news broadcasts portray nothing could be farther from the absolute truth.
white-collar crime” (Shapiro, S. P.). It is no surprise to anyone that positions of trust regularly decentralize to corporations, occupations, and “white-collar” individuals. Nevertheless, the concept of “white-collar crime” involves a false relationship between role-specific norms and the characteristics of those who typically occupy these roles. Most of the time, it is the offender that is looked at more than the crime itself and assumptions about the individuals automatically come into play. It has be to acknowledged that “ class or organizational position are consequential and play a more complex role in creating opportunities for wrongdoing and in shaping and frustrating the social control process than traditional stereotypes have allowed” (Shapiro, S. P.). The opportunities to partake in white-collar crime and violate the trust in which ones position carries are more dependent upon the individuals place in society, not just the work place. The ways in which white-collar criminals establish and exploit trust are an important factor in truly exploring and defining the concept of white-collar crime.
Most people consider this crime to consist of CEO’s manipulating their way to making a large fortune. This of course, is true most of the time in high-profile cases. For example, in late 2001 Enron Corporation executives confessed to overstating the company’s earnings. This lead to artificially inflating what the company was worth and deceived the investors. It took some time to unravel all the fraud put behind this devious act but shows how sophisticated white-collar crime can be. Although it’s usually associated with upper management of corporations, people from all different levels and occupations can perform this crime ("How White-collar Crime Works").
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.
For instance, any financial crime can leave individuals without shelter, money, or any reasonable quality of life due to the white collar offense. Therefore, white collar crime may not involve force, they still may affect people physically. As a matter of fact, white collar crime may result in a greater impact than street crimes. Nevertheless, we continue to operate on a dichotomy of beliefs regarding violent and non-violent crimes. In this paper, we will explore white collar crime as a non-violent crime. Those crimes under discussion are blackmail, bribery, embezzlement, and forgery. In addition, we will discuss violent crimes such as first degree, second degree, and manslaughter (Verstein,
White collar crimes do not garner as much media attention as that of violent crimes (Trahan, Marquart, & Mullings 2005). This is an odd fact because white collar crimes cost society much more than violent crimes do (Messner & Rosenfeld 2007). While there are many different definitions for white collar crime, Schoepfer and Piquero describe it as a nonphysical crime that is used to either obtain goods or to prevent goods from being taken (2006). People who commit these crimes are looking for personal or some sort of organizational gain and are being pressured to be economically successful from the idea of the American dream. The authors suggest that there are two types of people who commit crimes, those who have an immense desire for control and those who fear losing all they have worked hard for (Schopfer & Piquero 2006). Both groups have different reasons for turning to crime, but both groups commit the crime to benefit themselves. It was found that higher levels of high school drop outs were directly correlated to levels of embezzlement in white collar crime (2006). Because they are drop outs, they are less likely to be successful legitimately and turn to crime more often than their graduate
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.
The foundation of our country, the keystone to our democratic system, is the integrity of social institutions that we not only assume we can trust but have come to rely on for most aspects in our daily lives. The integrity of these social institutions can only be achieved through building blocks such as internal controls and independent, verifiable information. White collar criminals build a sense of false integrity around them in order to gain the trust of their victims, ranging from the young to the very old. Friedrich’s (2010) Trusted Criminals defines the foundation to white collar crime, the level of trust we have for those in power. We trust those in charge, those with power, and those who represent the integrity of our social institutions.
In the twentieth century, White Collar and Organized Crimes have attracted the attention of the U.S. Criminal Justice System due to the greater cost to society than most normal street crime. Even with the new attention by the Criminal Justice System, both are still pretty unknown to the general public. Although we know it occurs, due to the lack of coverage and information, society does not realize the extent of these crimes or the impact. White Collar and Organized is generally crime committed by someone that is considered respectable and has a high social status. The crimes committed usually consist of fraud, insider trading, bribery, embezzlement, money laundering, identity theft or forgery. One person would not normally commit all of these but likely one or the other.
Fraud and white-collar crime are common forms of crimes that people commit in various aspects and positions in the corporate world. Fraud and white-collar crimes have similar meaning as they refer to the non-violent crimes that people commit with the basic objective of gaining money using illegal means. The cases of white-collar crimes have been increasing exponentially in the 21st century due to the advent of technology because fraudsters apply technological tools in cheating, swindling, embezzling, and defrauding people or organizations. White-collar crime is a complex issue in society because its occurrence is dependent on many factors such as organizational structure, organization culture, and personality traits. Thus, the literature review examines how organizational structure, organizational culture, and personality traits contribute to the occurrence of white-collar crimes.
Kharpal, A 2013, Cyber-crime is ‘greatest threat’ to companies survival: EY, CNBC, accessed 12 November 2013, http://www.cnbc.com/id/101155856
The following memorandum written by a director of a security and safety consulting service discusses a critical issue effecting business in our economy today, that of employee theft. "Our research indicated that, over past six years, no incident of employee theft have been reported within ten of the companies that have been our clients. In analyzing the security practices of these ten companies, we have further learned that each of them requires its employees to wear photo identification badges while at work. In the future, we should recommend the uses of such identification badges to all of our clients." The issue of employee theft is a broad problem and has different labels to identify it, shrinkage for the retail industry and hidden profit loss in the technology sector are serval examples of common terms used for employee theft. The author of this memorandum presents several data points and suggests one recommendation to effect the issue of employee theft based on a sampling of the client population.
Along with the huge amounts of power that come with big corporations, comes the temptation of money and the corrupt nature of wanting to attain more at any and all costs. During the early 1900’s, a sect of journalists and writers became frustrated with the corruption found inside corporations and took actions to correct this behavior. In what is now known as the work of the “muckrakers”, large corporations were exposed for “a variety of illegal, unethical, harmful, and otherwise abominable and scandalous practices” including “corruption in municipalities, unhealthful, inhumane conditions in food-processing plants, dangerous conditions in coal mines, illegal and deceptive advertising, the abuse of mental patients by staff, the exploitation of factory workers, the running of ‘sweat shops’ (Goode, White Collar Crime)” and the list continues. However, while the new information characterized this type of behavior as “deviant” it was not in fact “criminal” since no laws were in place against such practices (Goode, White Collar Crime). In 1906, legislation was passed regulating the food processing industry and later, in 1916, the first child labor laws were passed (Goode, White Collar Crime). The term “white collar crime”, however, did not surface until 1939 (Goode, White Collar Crime). During a talk, given by Edwin Sutherland, before the American Sociological Society meeting, Sutherland used the term “white collar crime” to describe “crimes committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” (Legal Information Institute). The types of crimes that are typically associated with this phrase today include, but are not limited to; bank fraud, blackmail, bribery, counterfeiting, embezzlement, extortion, forgery, insider trading, investment schemes, larceny, money laundering and tax evasion. Today, the white collar criminal,