White Collar Crimes There Are Two Major

White Collar Crimes There are two major categories of crime majorly grouped into 'blue collar' and 'White Collar' crimes. The blue collar usually involves violence and of interest here is the 'white collar' which is usually found among the well educated and informed people in the society. The white collar crimes are mainly committed by the upper educated class through the pen and paper, do not involve a lot of violence and may not necessarily involve crimes against humanity.

But the blue collar crimes are predominantly violent crimes that may involve serious injuries or even death. They do not require much educational intelligence to commit and are common among the poorer population of the society (Gonzales J.D., 2011). One such case that has of late attracted the attention of the media with its beginning being in 2009 and the conclusion being this month is the case of Rod Blagojevich, who now faces up to 20 years in prison after the jury found him guilty of 17 counts.

He was accused of various corruption charges and malicious deals while he was a governor, and these are categorized under white collar crimes. One of the most outrageous and much spoken about is the intention to sell the senate seat that was left vacant by Obama upon his ascent to presidency. The Illinois state law indicates that the Governor is charged with naming of a senator when the seat falls vacant as was in Obama's case in 2008.

Rod Blagojevich, commonly known as Blago, wanted to take advantage of this power to exploit people through selling it to the highest bidder or take it up. It was after a tip off that the federal agents began their work on trailing the truth about the matter. They set several wiretaps and recorded hours upon hours of Blago hawking the seat and saying the deals he wanted for the seat (Guardian, 2011).

In the course of the investigations, the agents also stumbled upon other cases of Blago swapping state funds for his personal campaigns as well as intimidation of the Chicago Tribune authorities to suck the writers who were criticizing him. However, Blago tried to weave his way out of all these saying it was all for the good of the Illinois residents. He even further said that these proposals are things he just said and never did the, unfortunately that is one of the characteristics of white collar crimes.

The jury took 10 days to deliberate after the hearings and the evidence presented and on June 27, 2011 found Blago guilty on 17 counts. Some of these included attempted extortion, fraud and bribery (IB Times, 2011). He was however acquitted of another charge on bribery and the jury remained undecided on the attempted extortion charge.

Due to the nature of the crime, the agents investigating the crime had to involve the use of wiretaps along the phone lines so as to be able to get the voice evidence of the proposals that Blago was making. On the swapping of funds, they had to employ the use of accounting skills and documents that led to a conclusive guilty verdict among the jury on most of the cases. White collar crimes, as noted above.