White Collar Crimes

White collar crimes typically occur in a professional setting, like a business or a corporation.  They are almost always non-violent acts that involve theft or deception for some financial gain. White collar crimes involve dishonesty and/or misrepresentation for fraudulent purposes.

White collar crimes are extremely serious as they typically involve large sums of money and the resulting charges are 1st or 2nd degree felonies where you can face up to life in prison.

White collar crimes are extremely time consuming and require a Team of experts who has the means and resources to thoroughly review your case.  At Smith | McDonald | Bolin we have a tea of three (3) attorney’s, a licensed paralegal and an in-house investigator, who is also a certified peace officer.

1. Embezzlement:

This is the most common type of White Collar Crimes we see.  Embezzlement involves a theft, or misappropriation, of personal property placed in one’s trust or belonging to one’s employer.

It is the abuse or mishandling of money and it is considered embezzlement whether you keep the property yourself or transfer it to another entity, like a friend or family member.

2. Welfare Fraud:

We typically see this charge when an individual is on welfare and collecting food stamps from the government, yet they have a job and do not report it to the government.

3. Bribery:

These types of allegations involve the giving, offering, receiving or soliciting of an item that has value to influence someone that holds a legal or public duty.  Both the bribing individual as well as the bribed individual can be charged.

4. Credit Card Abuse or Fraud:

This occurs when one individual takes another individual’s credit card information, without their authorization, in an to attempt steal their identity and remove money from the card or charge a number of purchases. Typically, credit card fraud falls under two types of fraud:

5. Computer and Internet Fraud:

Individuals involved in this type of cybercrime use a computer to misrepresent a fact dishonestly to encourage another to do something or not do something that can cause them a loss. There are a number of different forms of criminal activity that involves a computer and the internet.

For instance, a common form is known as “hacking,” where an individual or group of individuals gain access to a secure internet/intranet or computers remotely using sophisticated technological tools. Another form occurs when an alleged criminal intercept an electronic transmission that was not intended for them, such as credit card information, passwords or other forms of identity theft.

6. Corporate Fraud:

Almost all of the charges we see related to corporate fraud involves some type of accounting scheme to deceive auditors, investors and/or analyst. Again, these types of crimes involve extremely large sums of money and a conviction could result in significant time in prison.

7. Financial Institution Fraud:

This is a type of embezzlement that is committed against or within a United States Government regulated/insured financial institution. Several types of  fraud fall under this category:

• Mortgage fraud
• Check fraud
• Commercial loan fraud
• Counterfeit money
• False applications

8. Healthcare Fraud:

This is a type of fraud where an individual files deceptive and/or untruthful healthcare claims to secure a profit. We typically see two types of Healthcare fraud:

• Practitioner fraud —Billing for care and/or services that were not rendered, obtaining fully-covered or subsidized prescription pills that aren’t needed in order to sell them for profit on the black market and filing more than one claim for the same rendered service.
• Member fraud — Forging or selling prescription drugs, applying for services and/or programs with false information or using another persons insurance card or loaning your card out to convene else.

9. Insurance Fraud:

An Actor attempts to get a wrongful payment from the insurer. Insurance fraud scams are classified in two ways:

• Soft fraud — An individual lies about certain conditions when applying for an insurance policy to get the premium lowered. OR exaggerates a claim that would have otherwise been legitimate.
• Hard fraud — This is not as common as soft fraud and it involves an individual deliberately destroying property in order to collect on an insurance policy.