Computer related White collar crime is viewed as an "intellectual" crime rather than a crime of violence or a conspiratorial crime. Whereas organized crime and narcotics trafficking require groups or networks to be involved in the criminal activity, a white collar crime can be conceived and executed by one person. The success of this type of crime often depends upon the ability of the criminal to plan carefully and execute the plan, sometimes without involving anyone else and sometimes in concert with others. Conversely, it may be that when the white collar criminal becomes overconfident about his or her ability to outsmart the police he or she is most easily caught. They perceive themselves to be in a battle of wits with the authorities and often believe that they can bluff their way out of the role of suspect (Tina Kelley, 1998, G5).
Various forms of fraud are considered computer white collar crimes. They include bank fraud; check fraud ("kiting"), utilities fraud, mail and wire fraud, insurance fraud, bankruptcy fraud, credit card fraud, welfare fraud, stock and commodities fraud, and business fraud. Tax evasion is an economic crime, as are "skimming" (removing profits from a business before recording them and thus avoiding tax exposure) and money laundering.
The problem of computer fraud is not that it is a new crime but that it is a new opportunity created by computer technology, certainly one of the fastest technological developments in human history. The improvement of computers has been astonishing. The cost performance improvement of the central processing unit (CPU) is more than 5 million times more powerful for an IBM RISC 600/320 in 1990 than it was for an IBM 1401 in 1959. (Michael Stroh, 1999, 1C).
Today's personal computers perform better and faster than much bigger mainframes in use just.......
