Follow the Money

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Someone wrote the other day to ask why I never write about white-collar crime.

Partly it’s because I believe the old saw that it’s better to write what you know, and apart from a fair number of political candidates I don’t know any white collar criminals.

Another part is that, like most criminal defense lawyers, I wasn’t thinking about money when I got into the business. I was thinking about the kinds of things Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck were thinking about.

White-collar crime involves math: you got to figure out the numbers whenever anybody’s charged with stuff like fraud, embezzlement, bribery, insider trading. While I was pretty good with it up through my undergraduate years, I forgot so much I couldn’t even help my grade school kids.

The only math they teach in law school is how to divide by three or multiply by zero point four.

I do appreciate the claim that white-collar crime is nonviolent, though I imagine victims feel a fair bit of mental and emotional violence. A slap upside the head hurts, but a slap upside the wallet hurts longer.

So as far as writing about white-collar crime goes, I’m going to plead ineffective assistance of counsel. Someone out there who actually knows something about it, be happy to hear from you.