New York Criminal Defense Blog

The name may sound sexist, but the title of the CBS show aptly introduces a niche area of law: Pink Collar Crime. You and other New York residents may be interested in learning how traditional white collar crimes committed by women can differ from those attributed to men.

As you may already know, white collar crimes involve people who are placed in a position of trust, financially, by their employers. They may be accountants, bookkeepers, office managers or financial advisors. They can be anyone with knowledge and access to a business’s financial transactions, bank accounts, client information and financial history. White collar crime includes financial fraud, embezzlement and money laundering, as well as Ponzi schemes. As Forbes explains, pink collar crime doesn’t just pertain to white collar crimes that are committed by women, but also the reasons many women commit the crime or their subsequent emotional reactions to it.

People in New York may be well aware of the myriad of legal issues that have been plaguing the former campaign chair to the current President. However, they may not always understand some of the legal nuances involved in the cases, including in the recent case involving 16 criminal charges that have been initiated in New York State. 

Similar to the charges the man was recently sentenced for, the new case essentially revolves around an alleged scheme to defraud and involves allegations such as falsifying business records and mortgage fraud according to NBC News. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has a provision for what it calls double jeopardy. This essentially prevents a person from being tried for the same charge twice and prevents them from having multiple sets of consequences for the same charge. 

You get accused of white collar crime, and the charges are serious. They allege that you have spent years or even decades financially benefiting yourself through illegal means. They're threatening to make you pay through fines, jail time and other ramifications.

Not only do you worry about the outcome in that sense, but you worry about your career. Is this it? You have worked hard for this your entire life. Could a conviction end it all? What will your friends and family think? How will you make a living again and create the life you want?

When discussing fraudulent schemes to illegally obtain money from unsuspecting citizens, people in New York may mistakenly use the terms "Ponzi scheme" and "pyramid scheme" interchangeably. The confusion is understandable because both types of schemes function in a basically similar way. Each requires many investors to opt into it, each involves moving ill-gotten money around from person to person, and each inevitably collapses when it becomes too large to sustain itself, leaving only the original instigator with a profit. However, there are some fundamental differences that distinguish the two. 

According to the FBI, a Ponzi scheme involves one "recruiter" who solicits funds from unwitting victims. The initial investors pay into the scheme, and the recruiter keeps the money instead of investing it as he or she promised. Then the recruiter targets a subsequent group of investors, keeping some of the funds solicited for himself or herself while distributing the rest among the initial group of investors, deceiving them into believing that their investments are paying dividends. There are two ways that a Ponzi scheme can come to an end, and neither is good for the investors. Either the recruiter is unable to keep paying dividends to existing investors due to an inability to solicit new ones, or he or she flees with the money before it comes to that point.