ABSTRACT
Following upon Sutherland’s scholarship, the study of white-collar crime has become a much wider subject. It includes a variety of criminal activities, such as bank embezzlement, land swindles, price-fixing, fraudulent loans, bribery, mail and wire fraud, and deception. It is not the offenders’ occupational position or social status that characterizes these crimes but rather how they are committed (Weisburd et al. 1991: 7). Herbert Edelhertz (1970), a US federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice, gave a new scholarly definition, arguing that a white-collar crime was ‘an illegal act or series of illegal acts committed by nonphysical means and by concealment of guile, to obtain money or property, or to obtain business or personal advantage’. This conception shifted the major focus from the status of the offender to a particular kind of offence. And it is becoming increasingly influential. Likewise, Weisburd et al. (1991: 81) argued that those in positions close to centres of money and power have the chance to commit the ‘most consequential white-collar crimes’ regardless of their status in society and their occupational prestige. For example, a low-level manager close to the flow of money may have the greatest chance of
diverting a large sum even though he is not a board member or a senior manager.
