Crime Prerequisites
Business, or white-collar crimes, may be defined as violations of trust caused by illegal actions of business professionals. The primary agents of business crimes may be either employers and business owners or a whole corporation. The major difference concerns whether the employee’s crime was committed on the corporation’s behalf. Thus, when an owner or manager commits a crime that benefits the organization as a whole, even when most employees are not aware of the unlawful operations, the corporation may be charged as a juridical person (Bernasco et al., 2017).
However, when a natural person acts for the sake of personal benefit, they are charged individually. As far as establishing a conviction for a business crime is concerned, the considerations are similar to the ones included in the conviction of other criminal offenses for natural persons, comprising the notions of offense seriousness, history of conduct, the time required for crime disclosure, and collateral damage of the offense.
Example of a Business Crime
One of the most recent examples press-released by the FBI concerns the conviction for financial fraud in the form of a Ponzi scheme in the state of Florida. In 2019, Ivan Acevedo and Dane R. Roseman were charged with a business crime and arrested for participation in a massive financial fraud that affected more than eight million residents statewide (SEC v. Acevedo & Roseman, 2019). The owner of Woodbridge, the head company, was also charged with the same offense. On July 12, 2021, Acevedo and Roseman pled guilty to the participation, and their final sentence would be announced in September. Shapiro, guilty as charged for his leading role, was convicted to a sentence of 25 years in prison (U.S. Attorney’s Office, 2021).
Privacy Protection in the Workplace
The extent to which an employee may be entitled to privacy in the workplace depends highly on the legal provisions predetermined by the federal, state, and corporate legislature. Thus, as far as private and public sectors are concerned, both are regulated by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) issued in 1986. The Act claims the employers’ legal entitlement to monitor written and spoken communication of the employees during their worktime, provided that this communication may legally and ethically affect the company (Freedman, 2020). When it comes to the differentiation between the public and private sectors, it should be noted that the expectation of privacy may be more reasonable for the latter because public sector employees act in the interests of the state and, thus, limit the extent of their privacy in the workplace in order to minimize the risks.
Test for the Tort of Invasion of Privacy
In order to decide whether an invasion of privacy occurred in the U.S. v. King (2003) case, the court tested whether the violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution tool place when accessing the files stored on King’s laptop. King’s attempts to secure access to data within a shared network were not proved objectively reasonable due to the fact that no specific means of intruding were employed in order to seize the data stored in the network visible to the Air Base stakeholders. Thus, when agreeing to the data monitoring within a network, employees should remember that the personal data they willingly store may be accessed without the breach of the Fourth Amendment.
Social Media and Human Resources Management
To begin with, it is important to state that running a social media background check is a lawful activity when performed in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Essentially, employers have the right to monitor the employees’ social media on the matter of appropriateness, as, frequently, unlawful and unethical behavior of an employee results in image and legal consequences for an employer associated with that particular individual. Thus, when the social media presence of an employee does not correspond to the values of the corporation, an employee may be fired. However, under the FCRA, every employee is entitled to know the reason for their dismissal from the position.
References
Bernasco, W., van Gelder, J.-L., & Elffers, H. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford handbook of offender decision making. Oxford University Press.
Freedman, M. (2020). Spying on your employees? Better understand the law first. Business News Daily. Web.
SEC v. Acevedo &Roseman, 19-cv-21380-FAM (S.D. Fla 2019). U.S.. v. King, 351 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2003).