CFE Exam Quiz 27

It is found that Sutherland’s fourth point indicates that the criminal learning process includes not only techniques of committing crime, but also the shaping of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes. Crime techniques often involve a high degree of skill; picking pockets (and not getting caught) demands considerable adroitness.

It is found that Sutherland’s sixth point of theory of differential association suggests that a person becomes a criminal because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of the law over definitions unfavorable to violation of the law. On the other hand, all the other points are in accordance with the social control theory.

Commitment refers to cost factors involved in criminal activity. People are committed to conventional behavior and probably have invested something—fiscally and emotionally—in their ultimate success—an investment that they are wary of risking by means of a criminal act. Commitment might involve things such as obtaining a better job or seeing one’s children succeed.

Among the important considerations is that control theory “assumes the bond of affection for conventional persons is a major deterrent to crime. The stronger this bond, the more likely the person is to take it into account when and if he contemplates a criminal act.”

The theories which believe that committing crime is some sort of a behavior that a person learns from his/her surroundings which makes it a learned behavior.

The Dictionary of Criminal Justice Data Terminology, published by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, defines white-collar crime as:
Nonviolent crime for financial gain committed by means of deception by persons whose occupational status is entrepreneurial, professional, or semi-professional and utilizing their special occupational skills and opportunities; also nonviolent crime for financial gain utilizing deception and committed by anyone having special technical and professional knowledge of business and government, irrespective of the person’s occupation.

The authors determined that most people convicted of white-collar crimes are not upper class; that social status has only an indirect significance; and that, once a conviction is attained, higher status often means a stiffer sentence. White-collar crime does have a unique place in criminology, but the split is not between an underworld of the desperate poor and an elite universe of high-stakes fraudsters. White-collar crime has some relation to both of these mythological worlds, but is largely the province of the middle classes, where organizational position is more important than social or professional status, and personal situations are more forceful than sociological trends.

The statements which prove that white-collar crime can be committed are as follow
An unemployed youth needing funds might turn to armed robbery or burglary
A corporate manager who was promoted from inside the company with only a ninth-grade education and who doesn’t own his home can commit the crime by using his position in the company.
The bank president or the company chief executive, for their part, can deal with a personal cash shortage through a variety of illegal tactics that are tied to their business can commit the crime.

Among the examples, the chairperson of a local bank board to set up loans for his ailing wood company. The loans would never have been approved without the chairperson’s influence, and he never reported them in his proxy statement to the bank’s shareholders. Ultimately, the bank lost close to $6 million. In this case, the chairperson’s status made a difference.

It is found that the example of a church group that used its daycare center to defraud the federal government of approx. $1 million, it shows that A criminal’s position in an organization and his ability to organize the fraud have far more bearing on the crime than social status or class alone.

It is to be noted that there are Eight crimes which were targeted as “white collar”: securities violations, antitrust suits, bribery and influence-peddling, embezzlement, mail or wire fraud, tax fraud, false claims and statements (in official documents), and credit fraud. Certain violations—such as charges against organized crime and breaking importation laws—were excluded because it was determined that they were not characteristic of what most people think of as white-collar activity.

It is found that there are revealing contrasts when these two types of offenders are compared:
I: Almost 97% of antitrust offenders had been steadily employed in the years preceding their crime, while only about 60% of the securities offenders had continually held a job.
II: The antitrusters had a median ratio of assets to liabilities of $200,000 (assets) to $40,000 (liabilities); the securities offenders held a median $57,500 in assets with $54,000 in liabilities.
III: Antitrust violators were more likely to own their own home (73.5% vs. 58.2%) and to be married (95.7% vs. 80.7%) than securities offenders.
The fourth option is the contrast found among tax funds and bribery

The authors remark that, although tax fraud is a typical whitecollar crime, “two-thirds of the tax offenders work in the manufacturing or nonprofessional service sectors.”

It is to be noted that some standard assumptions still apply. For example, informing on one’s cohorts does help. Crimes of the Middle Classes found that more than 42 percent of cooperating defendants were charged with a single violation, while only 30 percent of uncooperative defendants were so lucky. The white-collar defendants receive bail rather easily. Moreover, by comparison, in a control group of “common criminals” (i.e., people convicted of the “nonviolent economic crimes” of postal theft or postal fraud), at least one-third of the defendants spent time in jail before going to trial.

Of all white-collar defendants, securities offenders are the ones most likely to insist on their day in court.

“Antitrust violators, who steal for their companies and actually provide the services they say they do,” are not seen as harshly as “those who steal from their companies.”
Securities offenders are stigmatized “because their crimes are often against their own clients,”
While bank embezzlers are judged with particular strictness “because they steal from their employers.”

Crimes of the Middle Classes does find that the highest status group—antitrust violators—were the least likely to receive prison time (about one in five) and to draw the shortest sentence (1.8 months).

It is to be noted that new information technologies mean that the opportunity for wrongdoing is growing, and many of the techniques are not widely comprehended by businesses or individuals.

It should be noted that all of the statements listed below regarding organizational crimes are true.

White-collar crime is distinguished from lower socioeconomic crimes in terms of the structure of the violation and the fact that administrative and civil penalties are more likely to be used as a punishment than are criminal penalties.

It is noticeable that in Japan, the Diet (legislature) passed a law for the punishment of crimes “relating to environmental pollution that adversely affects the health of persons.” Under this law, intentional or negligent emission of a substance that causes danger to human life or health by industries is to be punished with imprisonment or fines.

As all the other points on the duties of large corporations are that they have the power to influence the manner in which laws are written and to commit acts that can inflict serious harm upon the population.

It is found that the costs of corporate crimes not only include financial losses, but also injuries, deaths, and health hazards. Such crimes destroy public confidence in businesses and hurt the image of corporations.

It is to be noted that corporate violations are increasingly difficult to discover, investigate, or prosecute successfully because of their growing complexity and intricacy. Moreover, corporate violations are increasingly difficult to discover, investigate, or prosecute successfully because of their growing complexity and intricacy. Similarly, some corporations pay bonuses to their executives, with the understanding that part of that reward will be turned over to the coffers of a candidate who the corporation favors.

Complex companies provide a structure that can foster misbehavior. They provide many settings where misconduct is possible. They isolate those settings in departments and in locations around a city, the country, or the world. This isolation, in turn, means that information about what one part of a company is doing might be unknown in another part.

It is to be noted that the larger a company grows, the more specialized its subunits tend to become, and this specialization thereby breeds a higher risk of fraud.

It is found that if the company wants to hide illegal activities, especially where a firm’s tasks are kept separate and unrelated, the specialized department is referred to for this purpose.

It is to be noted that specialized departments in a large firm compete for resources not only with other firms, but also with departments in their own firm. Moreover, they need to outperform both other businesses and internal units can generate sufficient pressure to lead to misconduct and it also hides illegal activities, especially where a firm’s tasks are kept separate and unrelated. On the contrary, large corporations have contributed significantly to industrial and commercial development throughout the world.

Large corporations have contributed significantly to industrial and commercial development throughout the world. Their size and resources enable them to organize and coordinate production and distribution. The capital resources of a large corporation provide it with the ability to develop, adopt, and alter technology on a large scale. At the same time, large corporations have the power to influence the manner in which laws are written and to commit acts that can inflict serious harm upon the population.

It should be noted that all the statements listed below leakages are correct.