You need a white collar criminal lawyer if you or someone you know is in a situation where they’ve either been charged with a white collar crime or they’re being investigated for illegal criminal activities said Winter Park Florida white collar criminal defense attorney Roddy Lanigan.
Defining White Collar Crime
Let’s say you did something illegal at work and it’s some type of white collar activity that might be criminal. Whether it’s dealing with a sale of stock that’s outside the law or fraudulent investments or embezzlement or something along that line.
You do need a special attorney to take care of your case. An attorney who is good not only with criminal law, but very good white collar criminal lawyer who knows the complexities of white collar criminal defense. This is not like getting your friends’ kid off of a robbery charge.
You definitely need a different kind of white collar criminal defense lawyer. There are many, many, extremely good Florida criminal lawyers when you’re talking about anywhere from driving while intoxicated to armed robbery to spousal abuse to any one of those what we would typically call blue collar or violent crimes. But they should not be involved in white-collar activity.
White Collar Criminal Defense Attorney
And the reason I would have that opinion is because you need to understand the business environment in which this alleged crime is supposed to have occurred. For instance, if it has to do with let’s say some criminal activity in the sale of unregistered securities, well if you don’t know anything about the securities business, the stock and bonds, and the types of activity that is now considered criminal in that area, then you may be a brilliant defense lawyer, but you’re now a defense lawyer who’s having to talk in a language that you don’t understand.
And you need to make sure that you have a lawyer who understands the environment in which this crime is supposed to have occurred. Because one of the things that’s very critical, to give you an example, if we see somebody walk into the Quicky Mart, pull out a gun, put it to the cashier’s head and say “give me your cash,” I don’t think there’s anybody out there who would doubt the idea that a crime has been committed. That’s pretty easy to understand.
So the defense lawyer is dealing with the issues, not of whether or not a crime has occurred, but did my client commit that crime? Or if he did commit the crime, was he insane at the time that it happened? You’re not dealing with whether or not a crime has occurred.
Whereas in the white collar arena where more and more activity is being designated as criminal and there is more and more highly sophisticated activity that sometimes the people who are doing it don’t even know how to really describe what it is they’re doing. White collar criminal defense is complex. Finding the right attorney to protect you is important and may decide whether or not you or a loved one faces prison time.
There may not be any disagreement about what happened, but the big disagreement may be whether or not that activity falls within the purview of the given statute. So it can be a fundamentally different kind of defense.
