White Collar Crime – Dealing with Prosecution

lawfirm
June 12, 2013

For years criminology has viewed crime incorrectly. It has focused on the financial background of the criminal, assuming that crimes are acts of people from poor family. However, in the year of 1939, criminologist Edwin Sutherland had challenged this concept. According to his theory, crimes are committed by people of every social status. However, with time this concept has lost the intensity as the theory of white collar offense come to light. The definition of this offense is pretty different from that of Sutherland’s definition of crime. It is true that crimes like tax fraud or security fraud are committed by people from higher financial background. Yet, these offenses are so frequently conducted by people from average financial background as well.

With time the parameter of white collar offense spread. Now, this is regarded as felony offense. There are solid reasons for turning the focus upon those who commit such offenses. General public are not interested about this offense due to the lack of bloodshed or mounting dead bodies. However, these types of offenses affect the human from a different level. There is another reason for this lack of public interest. This offense is sometimes untraceable. It takes a longer time to detect crimes like money laundering or embezzlement.

Unlike the common crimes like robbery or murder, such offenses are generally operated from security of home or offices. This helps the offenders remain anonymous throughout the course of offense. To trace such a crime, the investigators need to follow paper trail which is by no means easy to deal with. Lack of expertise in the matter sometimes hinders the identification of the criminal or detection of the crime. For a white collar offender, even a couple of hours are enough to wipe away trails.

Due to such reasons, when police officers get hold of solid evidence against an individual, they usually press hard for a conviction. Sadly, it is easy to get caught in the paper trail and get wrongly accused of the offense. Yet, there is not reason to assume that an innocent does not go to prison. There are numerous examples that show that people going to jail for offenses they have not committed.

Keeping these aspects in mind, it is important that you do not sit worrying about the consequences if charged for white collar offense. Delaying will not help you. Likewise, not thinking about the incident will not make it better either. What you need to do in this situation is take prompt action.

Legal assistance is the only way to prevent upcoming disaster. However, just any lawyer will not be enough. You need to hire an expert white collar crime attorney. This is governed by federal law. Without exposure in the federal court, an attorney will be ill-equipped to deal with such a lawsuit. If you compromise with the choice of legal counselor, you may have to sacrifice a few years from your life as imprisonment is a common penalty for committing federal offenses. In addition, you will be fined for violating federal law. If you fail to pay the fine, your prison time will increase.