Guide · Criminal

White Collar and Financial Crime: A Comprehensive Guide to Fraud, Investigations, and Defense

31 U.S.C. § 3730

Type
Guide
Jurisdiction
National
Date
2025-02-21
Topic
Criminal

This guide covers federal white collar and financial crime systematically, from the origins of an investigation through charging, defense, resolution, and sentencing. Part one covers how investigations begin, the investigative tools that generate them, and what the witness, subject, and target classifications actually mean. Part two sets out the substantive fraud statutes element by element, together with the Supreme Court decisions that have repeatedly narrowed the theories built on them. Part three covers the process crimes — false statements, obstruction, record destruction, witness tampering, and perjury — which account for a large share of convictions and arise from conduct after the investigation begins. Part four covers the financial statutes: money laundering, the Bank Secrecy Act and structuring, RICO, securities offenses, and foreign bribery. Part five covers grand jury practice, subpoena response, privilege, and the individual's position under the Fifth Amendment. Part six covers corporate criminal liability, internal investigations, self-disclosure, cooperation credit, and negotiated resolutions, including where the company's interests and its employees' interests separate. Part seven covers parallel civil, regulatory, and administrative proceedings, and part eight covers sentencing, forfeiture, restitution, and collateral consequences, with detailed treatment of the guideline loss calculation. Tables and worked examples appear throughout.

White Collar and Financial Crime: A Comprehensive Guide to Fraud, Investigations, and Defense

Criminal > White Collar and Financial Crime | Published 21 February 2025 - Updated 2 August 2026 | UpLaw - uplaw.us

Federal white collar practice is organized around a paradox. The substantive fraud statutes are written so broadly that almost any dishonest commercial conduct can be described as a violation — and the Supreme Court has spent forty years cutting back the theories that broadness invites. Meanwhile the process statutes, which punish what people do after an investigation begins, have remained expansive and account for a large share of actual convictions.

The full text of this document is available to Executive subscribers and above. See plans.