White-Collar Crime 

Health care fraud 

Mortgage fraud 

There are two types of mortgage fraud:

• Fraud for profit: Professionals in the home buying process steal cash and equity from lenders and homeowners. These types of cases are a priority for the FBI.
• Fraud for housing: Borrowers lie about their incomes or assets on a loan application or influence an appraiser to manipulate a property's value.

The FBI works with partners to investigate mortgage and financial institution fraud cases. The FBI participates in task forces that share intelligence, de-conflict cases, and create joint investigations.

Corporate fraud

As the lead agency investigating corporate fraud, the FBI focuses its efforts on cases that involve accounting schemes and self-dealing by corporate executives, as well as obstruction of justice (activities designed to conceal this type of criminal conduct).

The FBI’s corporate fraud investigations primarily focus on:

Falsification of financial information:

• false accounting and/or misrepresentations of financial conditions
• fraudulent trades designed to inflate profits or hide losses
• illicit transactions designed to escape regulatory oversight

Self-dealing by corporate insiders:

• insider trading (stock trading based on material, non-public information)
• kickbacks
• misuse of corporate property for personal gain
• individual tax violations related to self-dealing

Money laundering

Money laundering is turning "dirty" money "clean" by making it look like money from crimes actually came from legitimate sources.

The FBI focuses its efforts on money laundering facilitation by targeting professional money launderers, key facilitators, gatekeepers, and complicit financial institutions, among others. And the Bureau regularly coordinates with other law enforcement agencies, international partners, and industry partners to detect and disrupt money laundering.

Money laundering allows criminals to:

• hide and accumulate wealth
• avoid prosecution
• avoid taxes
• increase profits through reinvestment
• fund further criminal activity

Criminals who engage in money laundering derive their proceeds through:

• complex financial crimes
• health care fraud
• human trafficking
• international and domestic public corruption
• narcotics trafficking
• terrorism

Criminals use a number of tools to launder money, including:

• financial institutions
• international trade
• precious metals
• real estate
• third party service providers
• virtual currency

There are three steps in the money laundering process:

• Placement is the criminal entering money into the financial system.
• Layering is the most complex and often involves moving money internationally. Layering separates the criminal’s money from the original source and creates a complex audit trail through a series of financial transactions.
• Integration occurs when the criminal’s proceeds are returned to them from what appear to be legitimate sources.

Securities and commodities fraud 

The creation of complex investment vehicles and the tremendous increase in the amount of money being invested have created greater opportunities for individuals and businesses to create fraudulent investment schemes.

To investigate and help prevent fraudulent activity in the financial markets, the Bureau works closely with various government and private organizations to investigate securities and commodities fraud. 

Financial institution fraud 

When criminals target banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions, it's called financial institution fraud. Embezzlement and misapplication of funds are two common financial institution fraud crimes in FBI investigations.

Many schemes involve compromising customers' accounts or personal information. Sometimes, fraud can be severe enough to cause the failure of a bank or credit union.

Intellectual property theft/piracy 

Intellectual property theft costs U.S. businesses billions each year.

Intellectual property theft involves robbing people or companies of their ideas, inventions, and creative expressions—known as intellectual property. This can include everything from trade secrets to proprietary products to movies, music, and software.

The FBI's intellectual property investigations focus on the theft of trade secrets and copyright infringement on products that can impact people's health and safety, like counterfeit parts for cars and electronics. The FBI works with partners in the private sector and other law enforcement agencies at all levels to investigate these cases.

Similarly, economic espionage costs the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year and puts our national security at risk. In these cases, foreign competitors deliberately target economic intelligence in advanced technologies and successful U.S. industries.

Learn more at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPRCenter).

• Federal Trade Commission Report Fraud
• IdentityTheft.gov
  
• Report Medicare Fraud
• Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)
  

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