The Real News-
Despite an enviable predictive track record and the success of our policies when they are (rarely) put into practice, white-collar criminologists re overwhelmingly ignored in our core area of expertise by decision-makers whose policies are so criminogenic that they cause the epidemics of “accounting control fraud” that drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises.
Control fraud” occurs when the persons controlling a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a “weapon” of fraud. In finance, accounting fraud is the “weapon of choice.”
I teach a class that focuses on elite white-collar crime. It can be taken by both law and economics students. (It could also be taken by criminology students, but none has ever done so because they are almost exclusively interested in criminal justice, a field that ignores the existence of elite white-collar crime.) My primary appointment is in economics. I have a joint appointment in law. I have a doctorate in criminology and I was a financial regulator during the heart of the savings and loan debacle.
I also teach about white-collar crime in my social science and law course, Latin American development, antitrust, and finance courses. The primary struggle is that economists, lawyers, judges, and even accountants have no theoretical understanding of modern white-collar criminology. They almost never study fraud mechanisms. The only field (accounting) in which it is now reasonably common to take a course dealing with fraud and to have a formal literature (GAAS: SAS 99) that discusses criminological theory applies a theory developed 50 years ago (the “fraud triangle”) that has no relevance to accounting/securities fraud.
© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.
