With all of the horror stories of murder or abuse filling the headlines on a daily basis, white collar crime may sound like the least of our worries. However, these crimes account for hundreds of billions of dollars and may be happening closer to home than we may think.
A new report by Summit Defense mapped out the prevalence of white collar crimes in cities across the United States. Identity theft, forgery and embezzlement are occurring across the country, including in our own state of Florida.
Of the top 25 cities with the most white collar crime, Florida is home to three crime ridden cities. The only state with more appearances on the list is California, a state nearly double in size of population, with five cities on the top 25.
Miami, Tampa, and Orlando are the cities where this white collar crime is the most likely to occur based on the historical statistics. It comes as no surprise that Miami is the most dangerous city in the state, coming in as second in terms of white collar crime prevalence. For every 10,000 people, there are over 4,200 white collar crimes in Miami. This statistic is the second highest in the nation, topped only by Richmond, Virginia.
There is substantially less crime in Tampa and Orlando, though these cities come in as 10th and 7th in terms of crime out of all cities in the country. Both of these cities have less than 3,000 white collar crimes for every 10,000 people.
When broken down by the specific white collar crime, very similar trends appear.
Miami is the 5th most popular city for identity theft, though this is much more rare than considering all white collar crimes holistically. There are approximately 50 cases of identity theft using the same scale of 10,000 people. Tampa has roughly only 15 cases while Orlando doesn’t appear on the top 25 cities in terms of frequency.
The same is true with both forgery and embezzlement. Miami appears within the top five cities with the highest prevalence while Tampa appears further down the list. Identity theft is by far the most common of these three white collar crimes occurring approximately double as often as forgery and eight times as often as embezzlement.
While these three crimes may be some of the most common in the white collar world, there are other illegal activities that contribute to this category. Some of the other crimes may include insurance or tech fraud, bribery, or tax evasion.
The truth is that white collar crime is out there. Though these statistics may seem alarming, white collar crimes account for only roughly 4% of incidents reported to the FBI. However, it’s clear that white collar crime is happening and something must be done to restore order in Florida.
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