White collar crimes in America

The pace of white-collar crime investigations and prosecutions in 2011 showed no signs of abating. The Securities and Exchange Commission promoted the filing of a record 735 enforcement actions in the past fiscal year.


The Justice Department and S.E.C. continue to aggressively pursue overseas bribery cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, while the demise of futures brokerage firm MF Global generated a multi-agency investigation of the loss of more than $1 billion in customer money.

The S.E.C. has been criticized for not being aggressive enough in pursuing cases from the financial crisis. The one area where it has been largely immune to criticism is in its pursuit of insider trading. Hardly a week goes by without an announcement of a new case, with 57 actions filed in the last fiscal year.

For years, white collar criminals routinely received a "slap on the wrist" - sentences of probation, or at worst a prison term measured in months, not years. A current sentencing regime is a reaction to that, and to the damage that major fraudsters do to the economy.

Without a doubt, they erode people's faith in the financial system. When people fear that they're investing in a scam, they're a whole lot less likely to invest at all.

In the wake of corporate scandals at Enron, World Com, Tyco and Global Crossing, there's little doubt that serious corporate crime warranted serious sentences that could deter future fraud of that magnitude.

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