Mid Term Review

Question 1

E. H. Sutherland is the individual credited with having first coined the term “white collar crime.”

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Question 2

Businessmen who committed exploitative acts were labeled criminaloids by E. A. Ross in Sin and Society.

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Question 3

The book White Collar Crime by Sutherland focused on corporate crimes.

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Question 4

Sutherland’s general theory of crime is known as differential association theory.

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Question 5

Friedrich’s multistage approach to defining white collar crime consists of the polemical, typological, and operational stages.

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Question 6

The primary victims as well as the context in which a crime occurs are criteria in the Typological stage of Friedrichs’ multistage approach to defining white collar crime.

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Question 7

Holding a legitimate position or occupation is most closely associated with a status-related meaning of respectability.

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Question 8

Garfinkel called the circumstances under which people are stripped of status and respectability degradation ceremonies.

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Question 9

The concept of moral risk refers to the practice of facilitating risky behavior on the part of parties who do not fully appreciate the risks.

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Question 10

White collar crime offenders are more likely to be middle-aged or older.

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Question 11

Occupational crime offenders are often middle class, but sometimes lower-class.

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Question 12

Crucial evidence in white collar crime cases is most likely to come from informers.

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Question 13

The False Claims Amendment Act encouraged whistleblowing.

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Question 14

Early 20th century journalists who exposed corruption in high places were known as muckrakers.

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Question 15

The general public is least likely to be aware of the role of criminologists in exposing white collar crime.

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Question 16

The positivistic approach to the study of white collar crime is associated with the use of the scientific method.

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Question 17

Since the 1970s, the unit of analysis in white collar crime studies has increasingly shifted from the individual to the organization.

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Question 18

Problems of objectivity may be intensified in the study of white collar crime if researchers are drawn to the field by moral outrage.

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Question 19

The case study is the methodology that provides a concrete, rich understanding of the dynamics and realities of a particular white collar crime case.

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Question 20

Control is the principal value of the experimental method.

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Question 21

The results of Milgram’s experiment on authority suggested that ordinary people will do something harmful or unethical if ordered to do so by legitimate authority.

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Question 22

Tracy and Fox’s study of fraudulent claims to insurance companies submitted by auto-body repair shops is an example of a field experiment.

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Question 23

Archival data is often obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

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Question 24

The pattern of media coverage of antitrust cases at different points in time calls for a content analysis research method.

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Question 25

According to the victimization survey conducted by the National White Collar Crime Center in 2005, one third of the individuals surveyed reported having been victims of some form of white collar crime in the previous year.

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Question 26

Government sources estimated that criminal activity was involved in approximately 70-80% of the 1980s savings and loan insolvencies.

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Question 27

The economic cost of white collar crime is roughly 10 to 50 times greater than that of conventional crime.

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Question 28

Losses to ordinary workers and investors as a consequence of the collapse of Enron alone were estimated at up to $10 billion.

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Question 29

The lowest level of total economic loss in a given year is most likely to be associated with burglary and robbery.

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Question 30

More than 30,000 Americans die each year as a result of work-related diseases and accidents.

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Question 31

The concept of “crime victim” has been most readily applied to victims of conventional predatory crime.

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Question 32

The earliest proto-corporations or “trusts” were churches, towns and universities.

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Question 33

The South Sea Bubble Act (1720) was inspired by a fraudulent trading company.

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Question 34

The Sherman Antitrust Act was partly inspired by the rise of the Standard Oil Company.

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Question 35

Approximatley 1% of the U.S. population owns about half of the outstanding stock and trust equity in the United States and two-thirds of its financial securities.

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Question 36

A conglomerate is a combination of centrally owned firms operating in different fields.

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Question 37

An oligopoly is the domination of a market by several large corporations.

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Question 38

Large corporations are best positioned to maximize profits with harmful corporate practices in Third World countries.

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Question 39

In 2008, American taxpayers were effectively bailing out financial corporations that had lost billions of dollars on subprime mortgages.

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Question 40

It has been estimated that improper disposal of deadly wastes occurs 90% of the time.

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Question 41

Twenty-four years after the Bhopal toxic waste case, many victims remain uncompensated and hundreds of tons of hazardous waste remain not cleaned up.

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Question 42

According to the text, the air pollution problem in Los Angeles can at least partially be attributed to the deliberate efforts of automobile companies to limit the growth of public transportation.

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Question 43

The text suggests that the Buffalo Creek dam break, and the earlier Johnstown Flood, would both be most accurately characterized as an outcome of willful corporate negligence and disregard for safety standards.

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Question 44

Upton Sinclair’s 1905 novel The Jungle helped inspired legislation pertaining to meat market standards.

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Question 45

In 2007 Eli Lilly agreed to pay half a billion dollars to settle18,000 lawsuits claiming that the users of its product Zyprexa developed diabetes.

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Question 46

The primary concern with the Nestle Corporation’s marketing of infant formula in Third World countries is that mothers in these countries do not have the knowledge, means or conditions to use it safely

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Question 47

Safety features were not a priority of auto manufacturers for much of their history primarily because safety features were not regarded as enhancing sales and profit potential for automobiles

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Question 48

Ralph Nader was the author of Unsafe at Any Speed, the landmark 1965 critique of automobile industry safety standards.

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Question 49

The use of tobacco, described as the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., results in approximately 440,000 premature deaths a year.

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Question 50

The most unusual feature of the Film Recovery Systems case was the criminal conviction of corporate executives.

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Question 51

Energy giant Enron, while claiming massive profits, paid taxes in only one year between 1990 and 2000, but collected hundreds of millions in tax refunds from the government.

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Question 52

Medical fraud accounts for between 3% and 10% of the annual $1 trillion U.S. health care bill.

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Question 53

“Parallel pricing” refers to the practice whereby industry leaders set inflated prices and supposed competitors adjust their own prices accordingly.

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Question 54

The major response to false advertising has taken the form of requiring a modification or discontinuation of a misleading advertisement campaign.

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Question 55

Wal-Mart has allegedly engaged in economic exploitation of employees, corporate stealing from employees, and unfair labor practices.

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Question 56

In September 2001, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would no longer seek to break up computer giant Microsoft because the Bush administration had declined to do so.

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Question 57

Fraudulent claims in connection with research grants and student aid is the unethical activity of universities most likely to lead to legal action.

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Question 58

According to the text, there have been some concerns over certain parallels in the fraudulent practices of the subprime mortgage loans and student loan markets.

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Question 59

Corporate crime is the primary focus of the contemporary scholarly literature on white collar crime.

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Question 60

“Predatory pricing,” is pricing certain items below cost to destroy smaller competitors:1

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Question 61

“Caveat emptor” - Let the buyer beware.

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Question 62

Approximately 70% of the CUNY students involved in Blumberg’s study The Predatory Society reported observing deceptive practices at work.

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Question 63

Misleading advertising is the deceptive retail practice which is likely to be regarded as most minor and commonplace.

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Question 64

In Caplowitz’s landmark 1960 study in New York City it was discovered that poor consumers pay more for the same or inferior products than do middle class consumers.

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Question 65

The Reader’s Digest study of auto repair shops found that most overcharged or performed unnecessary repairs.

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Question 66

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that American consumers lose billions of dollars to faulty or unnecessary repairs.

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Question 67

It is probably easiest to cheat on pricing if you are selling prescription drugs.

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Question 68

The claim of the professions to have a “calling” is principally associated with the idea that they have an obligation to use their specialized knowledge on behalf of the common good.

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Question 69

The “structural contradiction” in the physician role is the conflict between the physician’s obligations to the patient and role as a profit-seeking entrepreneur

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Question 70

According to an estimate cited in the text, sixteen thousnd Americans die annually after an unnecessary operation.

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Question 71

The annual dollar losses due to fraudulent or abusive medical billing have been estimated to be in the tens of billions.

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Question 72

Ping-ponging is the term asociated with referring patients to several different practitioners when their symptoms do not warrant such referral.

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Question 73

The “power of attorney” granted to lawyers provides lawyers with unusual opportunities to steal from their own clients.

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Question 74

The two major types of legal crime are fraud and collusion.

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Question 75

Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew, a lawyer, was forced to resign from the Vice Presidency following charges that he evaded paying taxes.

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Question 76

Plagiarism is best defined as theft of the ideas or work of others.

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Question 77

According to the text, Madonna Constantine, a professor of psychology at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, explained the plagiarism charges against her as institutional racism.

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Question 78

In 2007, directors of financial aid at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California were found hold shares in student loan companies which students were referred.

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Question 79

The text identifies cheating as the clearest example of student white collar crime.

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Question 80

According to the text, the employees who account for the largest proportion of employee crime losses are likely to be managers.

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Question 81

Expense account padding is the form of high-level employee activity which is most likely to be unauthorized, and therefore illegal.

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Question 82

The estimated percentage of inventory shrinkage caused by employee theft is as high as 75%.

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Question 83

The most appropriate term for theft through misrepresentation is fraud.

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Question 84

Sabotage is best defined as an employee purposely destroying their employer’s product, facilities, machinery, or records.

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Question 85

Among conventional lower-level employees, those who commit theft are most likely to be young, male, and unmarried.

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Question 86

According to Horning’s study of employee crime, it was company property most likely to be stolen.

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Question 87

According to Mars’ typology of employee theft “donkeys” and “hawks” are most likely to steal time and engage in creative accounting.

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Question 88

Clark & Hollinger’s major study of employee crime identified the opportunity to steal as a major determinant of employee theft.

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Question 89

Income tax evasion and insurance fraud are the two major forms of avocational crime.

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Question 90

In the United States, the IRS estimates that about one fifth of individual income tax due to the federal government is not paid.

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Question 91

Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison in 2008 after being convicted of three misdemeanor charges of failing to file income tax forms.

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Question 92

By some estimates three hundered fifty million people died in the 20th century worldwide, , as a result of deliberate state actions.

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Question 93

Political white collar crime is the term which applies to illegal activities carried out by officials and politicians for direct personal gain.

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Question 94

Governmental crime, as distinct from the traditional notion of political crime, is exemplified by state-agency illegal surveillance.

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Question 95

The broadest term associated with governmental crime is abuse of power.

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Question 96

The view of anarchists is best characterized as holding that the state is by its very nature a criminal enterprise.

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Question 97

The term My Lai refers to a massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American troops.

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Question 98

The notion of a “nuclear winter” refers to the environmental impact of an exchange of nuclear weapons.

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Question 99

Genocide is a term which most commonly refers to a deliberate state policy of mass killing directed at some identifiable group of people.

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Question 100

The most famous trial for war crimes, and crimes against humanity, took place in Nuremberg.

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Question 101

According to the text, many repressive countries impose odious debt on their citizens: i.e., debts from foreign loans that were knowingly made to repressive regimes.

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Question 102

The United States historically tolerated or supported repressive right-wing regimes while condemning repressive left-wing regimes.

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Question 103

After Suharto, who allegedly acquired $73 billion during his 32 years as president of Indonesia, was forced out of office in 1998, he and his family were believed to have still been in control of some $15 billion.

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Question 104

Since World War II the claim of corruption at the core of the state has been especially directed at Third World nations.

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Question 105

A negligent state is best defined as a state which fails to prevent human suffering which it could in fact prevent.

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Question 106

Nonfeasance is best defined as failing to do something you are required to do.

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Question 107

Malfeasance is best defined as doing something you are prohibited from doing.

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Question 108

Misfeasance is best defined as performing a permissible act in an improper manner.

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Question 109

The “White House Plumbers Unit” were a group of White House-based operatives who engaged in illegal investigations.

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Question 110

The principal illegality alleged in the Iran-Contra arms scheme was a violation of the Boland Act, which had expressly prohibited covert aid to the Contras.

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Question 111

The special FBI unit which engaged in the extralegal and illegal disruption and destabilizing of dissident political groups was known as COINTELPRO.

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Question 112

The most comprehensive list of police crime would include violations of constitutional rights, excessive use of force, and related illegal acts to fulfill state or department directives.

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Question 113

The “Dirty Harry” problem refers to the use of improper means by the police to achieve crime control ends.

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Question 114

The Lexow Commission, the Knapp Commission, and the Mollen Commission all found significant evidence of corruption among New York City police officers over a hundred year period.

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Question 115

According to the text, the extraordinary hypocrisy of the HUD scandal during the Reagan Administration is exemplified by the fact that an administration which campaigned against big government and government waste engaged in large scale waste, and programs intended to assist poor Americans were milked by wealthy individuals.

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Question 116

William Marcy Tweed was the 19th-century leader of New York City’s Tammany Hall who went to prison after conviction on charges involving massive fraud,

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Question 117

A major factor contributing to the New York City corruption scandals of the 1980s was a city fiscal crisis which led to a considerable expansion of private contracting for goods and services.

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Question 118

The Credit Mobilier case principally involved corruption of Congressmen in connection with the westward expansion of the Union Pacific railroad.

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Question 119

A prominent corruption case in which Congressmen were videotaped accepting bribes in an FBI “sting” was known as Abscam.

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Question 120

Criminal prosecutions of judges are rarest on the federal level.

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Question 121

State-corporate crime is characterized as a hybrid form of white collar crime.

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Question 122

The fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 is attributed in the text to the mutual interests of a state agency and a private contractor in seeing a launch through despite adverse weather conditions.

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Question 123

Crimes of globalization are a result of policy decisions of high-level officials of major financial institutions and government agencies who are attempting realize positive outcomes or avoid losses.

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Question 124

The World Bank Which has been charged with complicity in genocidal policies, exacerbating ethnic conflict, increasing economic inequality, and displacing indigenous people in developing countries.

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Question 125

The Dam at Pak Moon in Thailand are global crimes partially financed by the World Bank.

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Question 126

The term “finance crime” is used in this text to refer to a large-scale illegality which occurs in the world of finance.

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Question 127

American banks have been implicated in tax evasion, money laundering, and predatory lending.

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Question 128

According to a recent California Savings and Loan Commissioner, “The best way to rob a bank is to own one.”

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Question 129

In 2003 and 2004, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae—as the two government-sponsored mortgage giants are known—were investigated for various forms of accounting fraud.

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Question 130

Total S & L thrift failure losses due to criminal fraud and waste have been estimated at $250 billion;, and with interest payments over several decades, the cost of resolving the crisis may eventually exceed $1 trillion.

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Question 131

The practice of violating laws and regulations which, even in the deregulated 1980s, were prohibited for S & Ls, is referred to as unlawful risk-taking.

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Question 132

Collective embezzlement is defined by Calavita & Pontell as crime by a corporation against a corporation.

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Question 133

The bailout program for the failed S & Ls, initiated in the early 1990s, resulted in new opportunities for suspect profiting by developers, speculators, and investors.

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Question 134

The 23,000 people who bought some $200 million of Lincoln Savings bonds from Charles Keating’s outfit were misled into believing the bonds were guaranteed by the government or absolutely safe.

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Question 135

The five U.S. Senators, among them John McCain, who intervened with federal regulators on behalf of Keating and Lincoln S & L were recipients of large campaign contributions from Keating.

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Question 136

By the U.S. Justice Departments own guidelines, the appropriate jail time for those convicted in S & L cases was less than that imposed for conventional bank robbery.

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Question 137

With regard to the criminal prosecution of S & L cases, most of those convicted were minor players.

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Question 138

Ivan Boesky exemplified a class of investors engaged in buying up stock in companies which were take-over targets, sometimes on the basis of insider information, known as a risk arbitrageur.

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Question 139

Executing his insider trades through an off-shore bank was a key element in Dennis Levine’s insider trading scheme.

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Question 140

The willingness of insider traders, once caught, to provide information about others in return for some consideration was a principal factor in the government’s ability to successfully prosecute a series of insider trading cases.

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Question 141

The “junk bonds” so closely associated with Michael Milken were bonds issued by smaller, less established companies, but paying a higher interest rate.

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Question 142

Martha Stewart was found guilty of obstruction of justice in 2004.

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Question 143

The term “churning” refers to the practice of trading in client accounts without authorization to increase brokers’ commissions.

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Question 144

Fraud that occurs in connection with the sale of stocks can be classified as finance crime and contrepreneurial crime.

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Question 145

Short-term trading, done in connection with fraudulent conduct in the mutual fund and hedge funds industries, is also known as “Market timing.”

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Question 146

In January 2005, New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer reported that his office had uncovered evidence of systematic fraud and market manipulation in the insurance industry.

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