Writer
Matt Zbrog
Follow the Money
Some of the world’s most malignant criminals never pulled a trigger or detonated an explosive, but they have ruined countless lives. By the most conservative estimates, white-collar crime costs the U.S. $300 billion per year—more than four times the annual budget of the Department of Education. However, in 2017, the prosecution of white-collar crime was at a 20-year low. So why do crimes such as insider trading, embezzlement, predatory lending, Ponzi schemes, and threat financing often go unpunished?
Armed with elite legal teams and well-heeled lobbyists, many white-collar criminals seem untouchable or “too big to jail.” But are they really? The Follow the Money series explores various types of financial crimes and interviews experts in the field on how to bring these robber barons to justice.
Follow the Money: Cryptocurrency Fraud
April 12, 2023
Ask a room of investment professionals to define cryptocurrency fraud, and at least one will tell you the term is redundant. The total amount of stolen cryptocurrency sits at over $46 billion in today’s value. But if you ask a room of forensics professionals to define cryptocurrency fraud, you’ll likely get a more serious and nuanced answer.
Follow the Money: Why Financial Crimes Often Go Unpunished
March 21, 2023
The mortgage crisis of 2008, when investigated by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, was found to have been precipitated by an industry full of predatory and fraudulent practices. The commission referred dozens of cases to prosecutors. Although fines were paid, no one was indicted, no one was put on trial, and no one was jailed.
Fraud is big and getting bigger. Generally speaking, fraud is defined as actions that deceive for financial or personal gain—a category broad enough to include everything from lying about one’s age to masterminding a billion-dollar pyramid scheme.
Follow the Money: College Admissions Fraud Crimes
June 20, 2022
White-collar crime is, on the surface level, nonviolent, which sometimes lends it a false patina of benignity. But these are not victimless crimes. In college admissions fraud, students gaining fraudulent admission to universities take places away from those who would earn it honorably, depriving them of high-quality education and the lifetime earnings that go with it.
Follow the Money: Embezzlement
March 5, 2020
Embezzlement isn't a perfect crime, but it can easily go unnoticed for long stretches, so to tackle embezzlement and bring its perpetrators to justice, forensic professionals need a skillset that blends expertise in IT, accounting, and investigations.
Follow the Money: Bankruptcy Fraud
February 7, 2020
According to the US Department of Justice, one in every ten bankruptcy filings includes some element of fraud. While it directly affects businesses and financial institutions who act as creditors, it also has negative indirect effects on the consumer, as creditors increase their fees on credit cards and loans to compensate for losses to bankruptcy fraud.
Follow the Money: How Rich Criminals Get Treated Differently
January 22, 2020
The criminal justice system has systemic flaws that disproportionately punish the poor and reward the rich. A bevy of factors play into this disparity, but mainly manifest themselves in discrepancies in bail, discrepancies in sentencing, and discrepancies in incarceration.
Follow the Money: Healthcare Fraud
December 12, 2019
In a hypothetical Dante’s Inferno scenario where all of the world’s white collar criminals were arranged in a descending order of wickedness, healthcare fraudsters would sit somewhere between hell’s eighth and ninth concentric rings.
Matt Zbrog is a writer and freelancer who has been living abroad since 2016. His nonfiction has been published by Euromaidan Press, Cirrus Gallery, and Our Thursday. Both his writing and his experience abroad are shaped by seeking out alternative lifestyles and counterculture movements, especially in developing nations. You can follow his travels through Eastern Europe and Central Asia on Instagram at @weirdviewmirror. He’s recently finished his second novel, and is in no hurry to publish it.
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