This sort of crime was originally discussed in Sutherland Edwin's first book, "White Collar Crime," published in 1939. It is typically difficult to describe because anyone can commit this crime through the use of money, which is also used in many other actions. A simple definition of white collar crime is a criminal act committed within the context of normal legitimate commercial activities. This type of crime can occur in stock trading, banks, or insurance claims, for example (Payne, 2012). White collar crime can also include illegal operations like drug smuggling. Because all acts are forbidden, this form of infraction might be peaceful as well. White collar crimes are also estimated to cost a country billions of dollars. For instance, in 1995, the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated that about $4 billion is lost in America every year due to white collar crime.
As the general evidence shows, individuals who practice this kind of act do it for personal gain. Groups may also be involved in this activity, particularly when they abuse their positions in a company by stealing money. A good example of an individual who commits this type of crime is a mechanic who overcharges the customer for services he has not rendered. Group crime, on the other hand, can involve people who deceive the investors through the stock exchange of the company and fattening their bank accounts. Therefore, white collar crime in these situations carries one common name known fraud. A good definition of the offense is an intention of an individual, government or business that are purposed of stealing money or property or causing financial injuries (Laniar, 2012). In this essay, different types of white collar fraud will be considered that are involved in healthcare and computer crime.
Health Care Fraud
Healthcare crime is when the company or an individual defrauds the government or insurer healthcare program. For instance, a person can decide to defraud Medicare in the health facilities (Fabrikant, 2017). Other violations may comprise of medical, health insurance and drug fraud. Common scams that have been discovered by researchers include using someone else’s medical card, altering medical cards, filing up a duplicate for no services, and also providing false information. One good example of health care fraud is the medical identity theft, where the persons’ name ID wrongly used without their consent for the purpose of obtaining medical products or services.
Theft of Identity Cards
The identification card could also be used for to get payments of the individual’s insurance funds. This type of fraud has resulted in enormous information being given out wrongly and sometimes even creating a false medical record to the name of the victim. Eventually, the victims may get the wrong treatment, either find that they have exhausted their health insurance or not be insured for both health and life insurance coverage. The victim who may be identified as a thief may also affect his medical record pertaining getting a job because he has not passed through the diagnosis of physical examination or lacks the health record documents. The effects of this type of crime may plague the victim’s financial and medical status for many years.
A good example was seen in 2011 in America, where about 91 people like nurses, physicians, and other licensed medical professionals were involved in enormous sums of lost money of about $432 million dollars through false billing. Another amount of $100 million dollars was also involved in community health care fraud, and an estimated $530 million dollars was the fraud of transportation. (Meidinger, 2015).
Physician Self-Referral Law
Physician self-referral is a practice in which a physician refers a patient to a medical facility having a financial interest or a compensative arrangement. To end the practice, the Federal government has enacted the Physician Self-Referral Law (Stark Law) which is a limitation on physician referrals (Kinney, 2015). The OIG (n.d.), gives a definition of the Stark Law as: “a law that prohibits physicians from referring patients to receive designated health services payable by Medicaid or Medicare from entities with which the physician or an immediate family member has a financial relationship unless an exception applies.” The penalties for violation of the Stark Law include fines as well as exclusion from Federal health care programs.
Computer Crime
Computer crime is any other crime that is committed through the aid of a computer; it is faceless and bloodless and has the potential of having huge financial gains. Most of the computer crimes involve the tampering of accounting and banking records which is mostly done through electronic funds transfers. The wire transfers or the electronic funds transfers can be explained as cash management systems that give the customer electronic access to an account, internal banking procedures, automatic teller machines, automated check processing, and on-line teller terminals. The computer technologies such as e-mail, modems, computer bulletin boards, and printers are used in theft of secret documents, counterfeiting, vandalism, bank embezzlement, and other illegal activities.
Malware
Every individual who uses a computer is vulnerable to malware, and when one is susceptible to it, they are enabling a crime on a mass scale. Malware is viruses, worms, Trojans, and other software that get access to your computer without your knowledge. Back in the century, when the software began, it was with the primary aim of thrills. Many of specialists, who wrote the software, found it amusing how a program could exploit security flaws and how far it could spread. Today the reasons for making this software has become more sinister making it one of the top five computer crimes. A malware piece could at times be in the pretense of a legitimate piece of software and will prompt for money for it to be removed. But not all malware has the characteristics of extracting money from you directly; many just bury themselves in a computer and make use of it.
Phishing
Phishing is a crime where computer users are tricked to give out their information like usernames, passwords and even financial information like credit cards secret numbers. One these criminals get this information; they can do anything through online activities. A good example was seen in the UK where a man managed to scam people about £ 750,000 within one year (Casey, 2011). The man who did the crime was named Olukunle Babatunde. He was wanting to defraud a financial sector by using financial details from 765 members of the public. The man executed this by sending numerous amounts of emails to people and in the result, acquiring people’s information. Because he was able to get information like this, he would also be able to sell them on the black market and even make fraudulent transactions.
Conclusion
White collar crime, as seen in this article, can cost the government and health insurance companies much money. As seen, this activity can be individually conducted or with a large group. For instance in health care, most crimes are carried out in groups because of the different protocols that are supposed to be followed. Large sums of money are seen to disappear, where the victims are never aware. In computer crime, we see the majority of these activities are individual based. They mostly involve the transfer of funds through a secured wireless transaction. The most common fraud as used in computer crime is the use of Trojan, which comes in the form of viruses. Malware is also seen to come as online programs that request users to send money for the exchange of a particular service. Phishing is a severe crime. This can happen to anyone and everyone, so it is very good to be careful. Phishing is a way for crimes to take one's information and use it for themselves and even hand it off to others.
References
Casey, E. (2011). Digital Evidence and Computer Crime: Forensic Science, Computers and the Internet. London: Academic Press.
Fabrikant, R. (2017). Health Care Fraud: Enforcement and Compliance. New York: Law Journal Press.
Lanier, M. (2012). What is Crime?: Controversies Over the Nature of Crime and what to Do about it. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Meidinger, R.J. (2015). The Truth About The Healthcare Industry. Pennsauken: BookBaby Publishers.
Kinney, E. (2015). The Affordable Care Act and Medicare in Comparative Context. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare in Comparative Context.
Payne, B.K. (2012). White-Collar Crime: The Essentials. Thousand Oaks: SAGE publishers.
