(Akiit.com) White-collar crime can have a negative impact on your business. If you are not careful you will end up losing valuable resources and money to dishonest employees. White-collar crime is one of the most popular crimes that can be perpetrated against businesses.
Almost every business suffers from it whether they know it or not. The interesting thing is that white-collar crimes are often perpetrated by people who are in managerial positions with high-security clearance.
Needless to say, you need to be watchful for white-collar crimes because they can cause your business to lose profits. Here’s a look at some of the major types of white-collar crimes.
Selling Stolen Property
When employees steal goods from their place of work they often sell them to someone else. If the person knows that the goods that they are receiving is stolen property they can be charged along with the employee.
You can reduce this kind of activity by keeping a good inventory of the products that you sell. It is often impossible to track every item in a business manually. This is why even if you are a small business you should consider getting inventory management software.
Credit Card Theft
If you have a system for storing customer’s sensitive payment information, you should be constantly upgrading it to ensure that it is very secure. This is because credit card theft is one of the major crimes that can be perpetrated against your customers and you.
Credit card theft usually involves identity theft. This means that the person attempts to impersonate the real owner of the credit card to spend their money. If your customers’ sensitive credit card information is compromised it can destroy your business’s reputation.
Another thing you should bear in mind is that credit card theft may not just be perpetuated from inside your organization, it can also be done by cybercriminals. This means that you need to ensure that you have the latest state-of-the-art technology for protecting your customer’s information.
Embezzlement
Another type of common white-collar crime that can be carried out against your business is embezzlement. When an employee embezzles from you, they misuse your funds for their own personal gain.
The person who embezzled is usually one who has access to company funds. This means they have the legal right to use the money for company business.
When an employee with this kind of privilege carries out fraudulent transactions that somehow benefit them instead of the company legal action can be taken against them. Embezzlement is a very serious charge and anyone accused of this type of crime should hire a white collar crime lawyer to assist them with handling the charges.
Workers Compensation Fraud
Employees often become injured in the workplace, when this happens they will need to be compensated. Your insurance company is usually responsible for taking care of medical treatments and loss of wages for your employees.
There may be times when workers may pretend that their injuries are worse than they are in order to receive more compensation than they should. It is important that your insurance company does due diligence on your behalf by checking, incident reports, and medical records to ensure that everything listed on the claim is legitimate.
Insider Trading
When an employee has a security clearance to company information about stocks, bonds, and other securities, they can use the opportunity to do insider trading.
Revealing information about the company that is not public in order to help someone or themselves gain profit is considered a white-collar crime. This type of crime is usually carried out by those in managerial positions and have access to this kind of detailed information about company stocks and bonds.
Non-Payment of Taxes
While the white-collar crimes previously mentioned discussed employees’ behavior. As a business owner, you should also be careful about what you do.
For example, Your business can be held liable if you do not pay your taxes. If you attempt in any way to avoid paying what is legally due to the government or you purposely do not file an income tax return then you can find yourself in trouble with the law.
You should also ensure that you are always paying your employees the correct wage and any benefits due to them or you could run amok of the law.
Protect Your Business
As you can see there are several crimes that can be perpetrated against your business. While you should trust your employees you should also be cautious.
When employees are not properly supervised and there aren’t enough security checkpoints in place it is easy for them to take advantage. This can have a huge impact on your profits.
Staff Writer; Sherry Jackson