Thursday, August 18th, 2022

Jennifer Taub is a lawyer, advocate, and author of Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime. We revisit our discussion on who gets a pass for committing such crimes, what the actual consequences are to our society, and how to hold the perpetrators accountable.

White collar crime, as originally defined by Edwin Sutherland in 1939, are offenses committed by someone of high social status and respectability in the course of their occupation. Today, we tend to define white collar crime by the nature of the offense, instead of the status of the offender. Precisely because of the high status of white collar criminals, very few are prosecuted and held accountable for their actions. White collar crime operates on a massive scale. Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has pleaded guilty to federal crimes related to its opioid marketing scheme; over 200,000 people have died of prescription opioid overdoses. Embezzlement and fraud cost US citizens an estimated $800 billion per year. By contrast, property crimes like larceny and theft are heavily policed and account for only about $16 billion in costs per year.