Financial fraud in the United States costs nearly $400 billion annually. The executives responsible for this corporate duplicity usually earn excellent salaries. So why do they become criminals? Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes shares his findings after years of extensive research. His numerous case histories make for fascinating reading. He speaks almost exclusively about men so don't look for gender-neutral pronouns. As Soltes explains, "Women are conspicuously absent from the ranks of prominent white-collar criminals." getAbstract recommends his compelling study to business students and professors, executives, business pundits, financial law enforcement officials and anyone who handles the money.
This book aims to bridge the gap between general CEO research, which is traditionally focused on positive aspects of leadership, and lesser understood research into CEO misconduct and crime. Gottschalk introduces convenience theory as an integrated explanation for CEO involvement in white-collar crime. The chief executive officer is a unique position within an organization in terms of power and influence, role and behavior, compensation and benefits, and conflict and competition. The convenience perspective suggests that motivation (personal and organizational goals), opportunity (offense and concealment in an organizational context), as well as behavior (lack of control and neutralization of guilt) make financial crime a convenient option to avoid threats and to exploit opportunities. A thorough and methodical study, this book will be of special interest to scholars of corporate social responsibility and criminological theory.
A study and analysis of lack of enforcement against criminal actions in corporate America and what can be done to fix it. In the early 2000s, federal enforcement efforts sent white collar criminals at Enron and WorldCom to prison. But since the 2008 financial collapse, this famously hasn’t happened. Corporations have been permitted to enter into deferred prosecution agreements and avoid criminal convictions, in part due to a mistaken assumption that leniency would encourage cooperation and because enforcement agencies don’t have the funding or staff to pursue lengthy prosecutions, says distinguished Columbia Law Professor John C. Coffee. “We are moving from a system of justice for organizational crime that mixed carrots and sticks to one that is all carrots and no sticks,” he says. He offers a series of bold proposals for ensuring that corporate malfeasance can once again be punished. For example, he describes incentives that could be offered to both corporate executives to turn in their corporations and to corporations to turn in their executives, allowing prosecutors to play them off against each other. Whistleblowers should be offered cash bounties to come forward because, Coffee writes, “it is easier and cheaper to buy information than seek to discover it in adversarial proceedings.” All federal enforcement agencies should be able to hire outside counsel on a contingency fee basis, which would cost the public nothing and provide access to discovery and litigation expertise the agencies don't have. Through these and other equally controversial ideas, Coffee intends to rebalance the scales of justice. “Professor Coffee’s compelling new approach to holding fraudsters to account is indispensable reading for any lawmaker serious about deterring corporate crime.” —Robert Jackson, professor of Law, New York University, and former commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission “A great book that more than any other recent volume deftly explains why effective prosecution of corporate senior executives largely collapsed in the post-2007–2009 stock market crash period and why this creates a crisis of underenforcement. No one is Professor Coffee’s equal in tying together causes for the crisis.” —Joel Seligman, author, historian, former law school dean, and president emeritus, University of Rochester
Winner of the 2018 Excellence in Financial Journalism Award From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jesse Eisinger, “a fast moving, fly-on-the-wall, disheartening look at the deterioration of the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission…It is a book of superheroes” (San Francisco Review of Books). Why were no bankers put in prison after the financial crisis of 2008? Why do CEOs seem to commit wrongdoing with impunity? The problem goes beyond banks deemed “Too Big to Fail” to almost every large corporation in America—to pharmaceutical companies and auto manufacturers and beyond. The Chickenshit Club—an inside reference to prosecutors too scared of failure and too daunted by legal impediments to do their jobs—explains why in “an absorbing financial history, a monumental work of journalism…a first-rate study of the federal bureaucracy” (Bloomberg Businessweek). Jesse Eisinger begins the story in the 1970s, when the government pioneered the notion that top corporate executives, not just seedy crooks, could commit heinous crimes and go to prison. He brings us to trading desks on Wall Street, to corporate boardrooms and the offices of prosecutors and FBI agents. These revealing looks provide context for the evolution of the Justice Department’s approach to pursuing corporate criminals through the early 2000s and into the Justice Department of today, including the prosecutorial fiascos, corporate lobbying, trial losses, and culture shifts that have stripped the government of the will and ability to prosecute top corporate executives. “Brave and elegant…a fearless reporter…Eisinger’s important and profound book takes no prisoners” (The Washington Post). Exposing one of the most important scandals of our time, The Chickenshit Club provides a clear, detailed explanation as to how our Justice Department has come to avoid, bungle, and mismanage the fight to bring these alleged criminals to justice. “This book is a wakeup call…a chilling read, and a needed one” (NPR.org).
Unlike other books of its kind, Understanding White-Collar Crime: An Opportunity Perspectiveuses a coherent theoretical perspective in its coverage of white-collar crime. Using opportunity perspective, or the assumption that all crimes depend on offenders having some sort of opportunity to commit an offense, allows the authors to uncover the processes leading up to white-collar crimes and offer potential solutions to this rampant issue, without being reductive in their treatment of the topic. With this second edition, Benson and Simpson have greatly expanded their coverage to include new case studies, substantive materials, and an annotated appendix of online resources to make this a core book for courses on white-collar crime.
“Blood-boiling…with quippy analysis…Taub proposes straightforward fixes and ways everyday people can get involved in taking white-collar criminals to task.”—San Francisco Chronicle How ordinary Americans suffer when the rich and powerful use tax dodges or break the law to get richer and more powerful—and how we can stop it. There is an elite crime spree happening in America, and the privileged perps are getting away with it. Selling loose cigarettes on a city sidewalk can lead to a choke-hold arrest, and death, if you are not among the top 1%. But if you're rich and commit mail, wire, or bank fraud, embezzle pension funds, lie in court, obstruct justice, bribe a public official, launder money, or cheat on your taxes, you're likely to get off scot-free (or even win an election). When caught and convicted, such as for bribing their kids' way into college, high-class criminals make brief stops in minimum security "Club Fed" camps. Operate the scam from the executive suite of a giant corporation, and you can prosper with impunity. Consider Wells Fargo & Co. Pressured by management, employees at the bank opened more than three million bank and credit card accounts without customer consent, and charged late fees and penalties to account holders. When CEO John Stumpf resigned in "shame," the board of directors granted him a $134 million golden parachute. This is not victimless crime. Big Dirty Money details the scandalously common and concrete ways that ordinary Americans suffer when the well-heeled use white collar crime to gain and sustain wealth, social status, and political influence. Profiteers caused the mortgage meltdown and the prescription opioid crisis, they've evaded taxes and deprived communities of public funds for education, public health, and infrastructure. Taub goes beyond the headlines (of which there is no shortage) to track how we got here (essentially a post-Enron failure of prosecutorial muscle, the growth of "too big to jail" syndrome, and a developing implicit immunity of the upper class) and pose solutions that can help catch and convict offenders.
This book explores a neglected topic in criminology women and white-collar crime. Taking a case study approach, it examines how women and crime has changed and why women have become more involved in corporate, political, and professional offenses. Fully exploring the topic, it discusses all issues including perpetrators, victims and whistle-blowers and incorporates interviews with female scholars and professionals. From insider trading to medical malpractice, it includes contemporary examples that engage the reader and promote discussion in a controversial area of study. Criminologists, anyone with an interest in criminal practices."
The ‘convenience triangle’ is the dynamic relationship between motive, opportunity, and willingness to commit a crime, which culminates in the illegal acts which constitute white-collar crime. This book aims to discuss the role of the ‘convenience triangle’ in white-collar crime, how it affects the perpetration of these crimes, the impact of this on detection and prevention and the effects of the punitive measures taken against white-collar criminals.
Ever since Sutherland coined the term ‘white-collar crime’, researchers have struggled to understand and explain why some individuals abuse their privileged positions of trust and commit financial crime. This book makes a novel contribution to the development of convenience theory as a framework to understand and explain ‘white-collar crime’.
Combating white-collar crime is a challenge as these criminals are found among the most powerful members of society, including politicians, business executives, and government officials. While there are many approaches to understanding this topic, Policing White-Collar Crime: Characteristics of White-Collar Criminals highlights the importance of police intelligence in confronting these crimes and criminals and focuses on the identification, retrieval, storage, and application of information resources. Combining theory with case examples of some of the most notorious criminal enterprises in recent years, the book explores: White-collar crime typologies and characteristics The roles and structure in a white-collar crime enterprise Sociological perspectives on why women are substantially less involved in white-collar crime Why chief executives are vulnerable to the lure of white-collar crime Characteristics of victims who fall prey to these crimes Theoretically based yet practitioner-oriented, this book offers a unique study of the contingent approach to policing white-collar criminals—emphasizing the essential elements of information management strategy, knowledge management strategy, information technology strategy, and value configuration in law enforcement. By implementing the techniques presented in this volume, law enforcement organizations can better develop and implement detection and prevention methods. This effective use of the critical element of police intelligence is a powerful tool for circumventing the tactics of white-collar criminals.
