CRL - Notable Criminal Law Cases (Lesson)

Introduction

Our world is filled with criminal acts taking place on a daily basis. These acts can be as minor as traffic violations and writing bad checks to more extreme and violent crimes such as bank robbery, murder, and terrorism. Many crimes are business-related crimes that not only affect the business or corporation involved but at some point the impact of those crimes trickle down to the consumer through higher prices, higher rates, or an effect on product quality and availability. In this microlesson we will review white-collar crime and take a look at some of the nation’s most notable white-collar criminal cases. 

Notable Criminal Law Cases

There are many criminal cases that have gained nation-wide, even global attention. Some of the most complex and high-profile cases involve white-collar criminal cases. In recent years, there has been an ongoing corporate crime wave. White-collar crime generally involves crime committed through deceit and motivated by financial gain. These crimes have involved safety violations, conspiracies, toxic dumping and other environmental issues, deceptive financial practices, illegal marketing, foreign bribery, and much, much more. The most common white-collar crimes are various types of fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and embezzlement.

Review the following presentation with a description of some of the most notable white-collar, corporate criminal cases.

Let's Review!

Take a moment to participate in the following activity to practice your understanding of the topics in this module.  Reach out to your instructor if you have any questions.

Final Thoughts

In many cases of white-collar crime, the customer or some other innocent party has sacrificed great losses long before the criminal activity is found. Often, the situation is held up in court and the victims may have to wait years for any sort of recourse.

There are negative impacts from the result of this type of criminal activity such as bankruptcy, job loss, profit and shareholder loss, and overall loss of faith in the enterprise process.

It is very difficult to fight white collar crime and often requires our law enforcement to look beyond the ways we would traditionally handle a criminal situation, such as through agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. With the ongoing plight of white-collar crimes, there must be a continued fight to hold corrupt businesses and corporations accountable for their actions.

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