White-Collar Crime - How Many Crimes?

Although the above crimes are not part of the Crime Index total, the FBI keeps statistics on forgery and counterfeiting, fraud, and embezzlement. According to The Measurement of White-Collar Crime Using Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Data (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Washington, DC, 2002), from 1997 through 1999, some 3.8 percent of all criminal offenses reported to the FBI were white-collar crime, for a total of 5.9 million offenses. Fraud offenses comprised most of the white-collar crimes reported to the FBI between 1997 and 1999, followed by forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, and bribery. Between 1993 and 2002 arrests for forgery and counterfeiting increased by 8.3 percent, arrests for embezzlement rose by 49.4 percent, and arrests for fraud dropped by 10.4 percent. Despite the low percentage of white-collar crime out of all crimes, it is speculated that white-collar crime can cost far more than street crimes due to the large financial losses incurred by corporate crimes against the government, environment, and society as a whole.

As defined by the FBI, fraud is a somewhat broad category that includes the following offenses: false pretenses, swindles, confidence games, credit card/ATM fraud, impersonation, welfare fraud, and wire fraud. Between 1997 and 1999, there were a reported 61,230 false pretenses/swindle/confidence game offenses, followed by 23,308 credit card/ATM offenses, and 8,689 fraud incidents that involved impersonation. Welfare fraud and wire fraud accounted for 1,289 and 984 reported offenses, respectively, between 1997 and 1999. The FBI reports that between April 1, 1996 and September 30, 2003, they received 268,536 Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) from banks for crimes involving check fraud, check kiting, and counterfeit checks and negotiable instruments.