Financial Crime or Business as Usual?
Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. When you think about it carefully enough, most careers involve moral gray areas. Even if you have the best of intentions, you are working within a corrupt system. You go into the medical profession because you want to heal the sick, but you end up enriching the insurers and the pharmaceutical companies, while you and your patients get poorer and sicker. You go into the teaching profession because knowledge is power and you want to help the younger generation reap the professional and personal rewards of education, but instead your classroom becomes the site of an ugly battle over competing ideologies, and the only thing everyone agrees on is that they blame you. In business, your goal is to get money, and that means that someone loses money. Meanwhile, the IRS wants its slice of the pie. Sometimes the line between financial crime and business as usual is not as clear as it seems. If you doubt this, just Google “is multilevel marketing a pyramid scheme.” Furthermore, there is a long way between civil liability for business-related misconduct and offenses punishable under criminal law. Here, our Miami white collar crime lawyer explains some common criminal accusations you might encounter in business, as well as possible defenses to them.
Is It Embezzlement, or Can You Afford to Have a Little Fun With Your Company’s Expense Account?
The crime of embezzlement occurs when you steal money from your employer. This can be as simple as pocketing customer payments that were supposed to go in the cash register, or it can be an elaborate scheme that involves falsifying records and paying kickbacks to co-conspirators. A common scenario with embezzlement allegations involves an employee using a company credit card or expense account for unauthorized personal purchases.
If you face embezzlement charges arising from your charges on a company credit card or transactions from business accounts, a possible defense is that your supervisors or company leadership authorized you to make the transactions. Remember that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to show that the transactions were unauthorized.
Is It Money Laundering, or Is Everybody Lazy About Record Keeping These Days?
Money laundering occurs when you falsify records to make it look like the proceeds of illegal activities are the revenues of a business in compliance with the law. Businesses where customers pay cash often attract investigations into money laundering. For example, it is money laundering if you operate a food truck and include the income you get from selling illegal drugs to make it look like it came from the sale of food from your food truck. If you get charged with money laundering because of alleged irregularities in your company’s financial records, you could argue that it was an honest mistake.
Is It Fraud, or Can You Afford a Little Business Bluster?
Charges of fraud apply when you knowingly make false statements to persuade people to give you money. Isn’t that the definition of advertising, though? Everyone knows that Red Bull doesn’t really give you wings. Just like you can defend yourself against allegations of forgery by saying that the document was a joke and the recipient knew that it was not real, you can defend yourself against fraud charges related to advertising claims by arguing that customers should reasonably have known the difference between sincere claims and promotional bluster.
Likewise, when it comes to attracting investments, you are trading in optimism. All investments involve at least a small measure of speculation. You can defend yourself against investment fraud charges by demonstrating that you reasonably believed that investors would get a return on their investment, and the failure to yield a return surprised you as much as it surprised the investors.
My Bots Made Me Do It?
Business owners are only just beginning to discover the ways in which artificial intelligence can help them conduct business. What if you enlist the help of chatbots, but they make false statements or conclude unauthorized transactions? The good news is that, to make a compelling argument about your allegedly criminal use of AI, prosecutors must sufficiently understand the technology and explain it to the jury.
Contact Our Criminal Defense Attorneys
A South Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing charges for financial crimes arising from your business activities. Contact Ratzan & Faccidomo in Miami, Florida for a confidential consultation about your case.
Source:
inc.com/ken-sterling/how-to-ethically-handle-legal-gray-areas-in-your-business/91034884
