Corporate crimes, commonly referred to as white-collar crimes, comprises of whole veer offenses that might seem different but contain some features that unite them. These white-collar crimes have advanced their dimension over the past decades. The transformations undergone by these types of crimes have been promoted by technological innovations such as internet development. The rise in the use of the internet has enhanced the development of various cybercrimes. Internet rise had primarily lead to the fusion between computer crimes and white-collar crimes. White-collar crimes refer to illegal, non-violent activities often committed by businesses or individuals for personal or financial gain. These crimes are often driven by greed and the desire to win at all cost. The harm that the white-collar criminals cause can be adverse.
Most of the crimes taking place over the internet are white collar crimes because the majority of these crimes are financially motivated and it does not involve any kind physical violence. Before technological innovation, these crimes were committed outside the computer but currently, these crimes are occurring at a wider pace because of the availability computers and the internet. Any kind of crime committed in the internet is commonly referred to as cybercrime, and when the crime is financially motivated and non-violent it becomes white collar crime. Hence, the fusion between cybercrimes and white collar crimes.
Crime category
From the categories listed, internet fraud category links with cybercrime. Internet fraud is the use of software or internet services to take advantage of the victims or defraud them. Through various methods, schemes of internet crimes have steal millions of dollars from the victims each year. Some example of internet fraud include hacking, data breach, malware, phishing, and denial of service only to mention a few.
In this crime category, data breaching is the most common form of internet fraud that affect many organizations and companies. Data breaching is the leaking of crucial and confidential information to authorized persons. Also, data breaching refers to releasing of confidential information from a trusted location to an insecure environment. Typically, data breaching occurs in corporate or personal level and it involves transmission of stolen data to unauthorized individuals. Due to data breaching, many companies and organization have incurred losses.
The other common form of internet fraud is ransomware. Ransomware is a special type of malware which targets technical weaknesses in organizations and companies. This type of malware normally denies the availability of critical data or systems. Phishing is another form of internet fraud that occurs mostly. The attackers normally sends spoofed emails to the targeted individual and deceive them to acquire personal and sensitive data such as credit card numbers and passwords. These forms of internet fraud have increased because a number of businesses and consumers entirely depends on internet to conduct transactions. Many consumers and organization have greatly incur a lot of losses via the internet and the fraudulent are difficult to trace.
Real world example one: JPMorgan bank data breach
In 2015, three people were charged with stealing data from millions of people around the globe. This internet fraud became one of the major sophisticated attacks because the attackers secured large volume of bank account data for unknown purpose. The three men described the incident as the largest financial institution data theft in the current century. While operating in Israel, the trio stole data from JPMorgan, one of the major bank in the United States and sold the data to a larger network of accomplices.
From the attack, the three men retrieved data for approximately 83 million of customers from the bank. By selling the data stolen to a larger network accomplice, the trio made hundreds of million dollars as profit. The attackers also stole the information regarding the bank news and performance alongside the personal information. The bank information stolen allowed the three men to make enormous amount of money by manipulating the stock prices of the company. By using fake identity cards, the trio facilitated large payment processing for the criminals and illegal bitcoin exchange. To the bank, the damage made by the three men was massive.
In this case, the United States secret service and the federal bureau of investigations agency undertook the investigations to determine the attackers. The investigations were launched after the attack with the FBI declaring to partner with the United States secret service to determine the scope of the cyber-attack. After the investigation conducted by the two agencies, the three men were identified to be involved in hacking the bank. Two of the three men were arrested in Israel by Israel police. The other individual remained fugitive because the investigators did not determine the actual location of the individual.