Some blame a general quest for the almighty dollar, others, a decline in moral fiber, but white-collar crime has been around as long as commerce itself, or at least as long as there have been white collars. The film “The Wolf of Wall Street” depicted invidious and systemic criminal conduct within a company. The term “white-collar crime” though, encompasses a wide variety of wrongdoing. While it is often viewed as a crime committed by the elite, its meaning today is probably broader than originally intended. The moniker is used largely to separate white-collar crime from what is considered common street crime.
Webster’s New International Dictionary defines white-collar as:
