What Are Common White Collar Financial Crimes?

 Posted on August 21, 2021 in White Collar Crime

Federal prosecutors indicted a suburban Chicago man who owns a drug wholesale company for buying $57.2 million worth of unregulated prescription drugs and re-selling them to unsuspecting drug stores and distributors. According to court documents, the man allegedly bought diverted prescription drugs at a discounted rate from unlicensed suppliers, told his employees to clean up the materials so they looked regulated, and then told buyers he acquired them from a licensed supply chain.

Prosecutors argue that because the prescription drugs did not come through a legitimate supply chain, they are unregulated and pose a serious health risk to those who use them. Pharmaceuticals, like the drugs in question, are supposed to be regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), whose criminal investigative division investigated the case.

The man was charged with six counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud, and three counts of money laundering. In other words, a fairly common stack of white-collar financial crimes.

White Collar Crimes

Some of the most common federal financial crimes people are charged with are wire fraud and mail fraud. According to the Justice Department, the statutes are fairly similar. They both require some form of fraud, meaning anytime you intentionally deceive or misrepresent yourself for personal gain, but the difference between them is fairly simple.

You commit wire fraud when you defraud someone in another state using electronic communication, which could be a phone or email. For mail fraud, you need to communicate through the mail. If you are convicted of either wire fraud or mail fraud, you could be sentenced to serve up to 20 years in prison per count.

Money laundering is also one of the more serious federal financial crimes because it is often associated with other criminal activity. Typically, if you are laundering money, you are trying to conceal the source of that money because it came from other criminal activity like drug dealing or predatory behavior. The goal is to make it appear as if the money was earned through legitimate and legal activities.

Besides committing illegal activity to earn money, you might have to commit more crimes to launder the money like wire fraud or mail fraud. If you are convicted of money laundering, you could be sentenced to 10 years in prison per count.

Contact A Chicago Federal Financial Crime Defense Lawyer

If you have been charged with federal white collar crimes, you should contact a Chicago federal financial criminal defense attorney immediately. Lawyer Hal M. Garfinkel has more than 20 years of courtroom experience in both defending and prosecuting defendants. Contact the Law Offices of Hal M. Garfinkel today at 312-629-0669 for a free consultation.

Sources:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/suburban-chicago-prescription-drug-wholesaler-indicted-allegedly-re-selling-diverted

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-941-18-usc-1343-elements-wire-fraud

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-2101-money-laundering-overview