Fraud crimes, otherwise labeled as white collar offenses, are a specific form of theft crime that often involves more of a plan of deceit as opposed to just robbing a drug store of the cash in their register. Often time's fraud schemes in particular take much planning and craftiness in order to deceive those whose money you are taking. A fraudulent offense is an act in which the offender willing knows that they are deceiving people in order to obtain their property; in most cases it is their money, sometimes it may be other things. Depending on the value of the property that was stolen from the act determines whether the charges against the person responsible will be misdemeanor or felonies.
A specific form of fraud is called a "Ponzi scheme" and it was based off of a man from Italy in the early 1920's that created a plan in order to take money from people hoping to make money here in the U.S.. Essentially this man would find ways to promote themselves and receive investors, promising an even larger payout and safe returns on their funds. This would begin as a small scheme and eventually it would keep growing and the schemers would pocket more and more of the funds, while still using some to keep the investors happy and believing the scheme was still legitimate.
In most cases the scheme will eventually fall apart because eventually the scammers are unable to keep up with the demand of money and more investor's needs for the scheme to continue on. A famous scheme that occurred in the recent years was one of the owners of NASDAQ stole an estimated $65 million in his scheme. After pleading guilty to the charges against him including mail fraud, security fraud, wire fraud; the court sentenced him to 150 years behind bars in prison.
As you can see, law enforcing takes fraudulent activities very seriously; with very severe penalties to those convicted. If you or someone you know has been arrested for any criminal offense, contact Hopper Law Firm today for the experienced Raleigh criminal defense lawyer you need!