White collar crimes are offences committed by persons who, by virtue of their careers, exploit technological, economic, or social power for corporate or personal gain. In 1949, an American criminologist named Edwin Sutherland illustrated typical attire of perpetrators, who were mostly politicians, high-ranking professionals and businesspeople. However, since Sutherland’s time, such crimes have ceased to be the exclusive domain of these groups. Nowadays, developments in commerce and technology have broadened the scope of white-collar crime to include intellectual property crimes, healthy-care crime and cybercrime (computer crime). It also includes more traditional crimes involving conspiracy, bribery, embezzlement, tax, antitrust violations, money laundering, perjury, obstruction of justice and regulatory violations The white collar criminals mostly referred to as WWCs have the following common characteristics:
They are nonviolent. Literary this means that during this criminal activity, there is absolutely no violence involved. Instead, they use deceit and concealment. A person who gives force information when applying for a government contract is considered as white collar criminal.
White collar criminals are persons in a position with certain powers vested in them hence they misuse those powers vested in them for their personal gains or corporate profits. Officials in public offices which accept bribes or misuse public funds are good examples of white collar criminals since they are using their positions for their personal gains. Therefore it can also correct to state that most of the white collar offenders are employed people. It can also be true to state that they (white collar criminals) are better-educated people as most of them are graduates from institutions of higher learning. The more learned a white collar criminal is, the more costly the crime is