Is This The Golden Age Of White Collar Crime?

Indeed it is, according to investigative journalist Michael Hobbes. Highlights of his research include attendance at a so-called Offshore Alert conference, versions of which occur several times a year in some “key offshore jurisdictions,” as well as in London and Miami. “Officially,” he writes, “participants come to discuss ‘wealth creation, preservation and recovery.’ Less officially, the tax lawyers come to learn what the feds will crack down on next year. The government investigators come to fish for future jobs.” According to Hobbes, elites are slowly looting the country, because enforcement of white collar crime is lax and the resources for pursuing it have been thinned to the point where they are ineffectual. One problem, he says, is that tax returns at the level where the looting takes place are dense and complex, typically involving numerous bank accounts in the U.S. and overseas, and to follow up on a hunch or a tip requires many days of sustained work, subpoenas, communication with embassies, etc. The investigators end up doing most of the legwork themselves, says one retired agent, a 25-year veteran of the agency. “You type your own shit, you make your own copies, you write every single affidavit. Sometimes you feel like, ‘I’m a senior-level person with a college degree. Why am I calling Wells Fargo and sitting on hold for 45 minutes?” On the other hand, it takes little more than a simple computer program to catch the infractions and errors in the tax returns of working and most middle class people. Essentially places like mom and pop grocery stores become the low-hanging fruit for a sparse team of overworked pickers. The problem goes beyond the IRS, he says, as all the agencies responsible for investigating white-collar crime – including the IRS, SEC, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – have similarly seen their enforcement divisions “starved into irrelevance.”