White collar crime: Computer Fraud
White Collar crime has been Identified by Edwin Sutherland as “A crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation" (Sutherland, 1939) White Collar crimes are serious, but non-violent crimes that usual deal with stealing money or other material items. Majority of the time they involve scams and an degree of high intelligence is needed to actually commit and not get caught. White collar crime has victims just like violent crimes and the victim may be affected for life. A few examples of a white collar crime would be, embezzlement, Copyright infringement, money laundering, bribery, computer crimes, and different kinds of fraud.
Since technology has come into play many issues have come to surface and the crime rates have increased causing one particular branch of white collar crime known as computer fraud. Computer fraud is where computer hackers steal information sources contained on computers such as: bank information, Credit cards, and proprietary information. Bank information consists of amounts, pin numbers, debit card numbers and information like that. It is obvious as to why computer fraud is a dangerous type of white collar crime committed; it affects thousands of people every day.
There are many types of cyber crimes that are related to computer fraud. Hacking into networks via Phishing and fake website, financial crimes such as siphoning of money from banks, credit card frauds, money laundering, online gambling, Intellectual property crimes such as theft of computer source code, software piracy, copyright infringement,