Contemporary Issues in CJ Response to Classmates Discussion Board Post Assignment | Get Paper Help
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The topic of white collar crime versus conventional crime has come up for many years now. While white collar crimes are going on everywhere, we as a society rarely here about them. On the other side, watch any local news and at least half of the time will be spent showing traditional street crimes. While there are some very famous criminals who profited off of white collar crimes, such as Bernie Madoff, I wanted to find something more recent. After a few internet searches, I remembered that Wells Fargo had a big scandal a few years back, so I did my research on them. In 2016, news came out that Wells Fargo employees over 3.5 million fraudulent bank accounts and signed up over 500,000 customers for online bill payments without their knowledge. They also charged military personnel interest rates that were illegal and then seized vehicles from those who fell behind on their payments. Also, 20,000 people lost their cars because they could not pay for insurance that they did not need, but were illegally signed up for by Wells Fargo. Until this point, Wells Fargo was the world’s most valuable bank. Since the scandal, they have not been in the top 3 of most valuable banks in the world, showing the magnitude of this scandal. Wells Fargo was forced to pay $185 million in fines and $5 million to customers who were impacted by this. According to the FBI, the annual cost of street crime is roughly $15 billion, while the annual cost for white collar crime is nearly $1 trillion. While some may assume that the punishment for white collar crimes is as harsh or harsher than those of street crimes, that is not the case for a couple reasons. First off, white collar criminals generally come from wealth. With that comes with the privilege of being able to hire the finest and most expensive defense attorney’s that street criminals have no access to. They can also afford to obtain great public relations forums to make their crimes look minimal. Another reason is that white collar crimes usually happen at a corporate level, and the power they have may make their crimes go undetected or unpersecuted. A defendant’s wealth, power, celebrity or social standing can have huge impacts on their sentencing, both positively and negatively. Take a look at someone like O.J. Simpson, the former NFL running back who obviously murdered two people but somehow got away with it. It can be argued that his celebrity status and how he was beloved before this case gave him an edge to the jury members. It can also be a negative in the sense that, as a celebrity, anything you do will be displayed all over media outlets such as TV and social media. If a celebrity commits a crime, it will not go unnoticed. Lastly, I do believe someone’s wealth or political connections can have an impact on their punishment. Looking back at Wells Fargo, not one of the executives involved had to spend any time in jail. While some had to forfeit money or were fired, there is absolutely no way that their status as top executives for what was the world’s valuable bank had nothing to do with it. There needs to be a crackdown on white collar crime, as there are too many criminals getting away with it.
Hochstadt, S. (2017, September 13). White Collar Crime at Wells Fargo. Retrieved from https://www.laprogressive.com/white-collar-crime-wells-fargo/
Justice Is Served: 5 Famous White Collar Crime Cases. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://online.king.edu/news/famous-white-collar-crime-cases/
