Most Union County taxpayers have no reason to fear a federal IRS tax fraud charge. The reason is that less than one percent of taxpayers are the subject of allegations of tax fraud that result in a conviction in any given year. But tax fraud does happen. In fact, 75 percent of income tax fraud charges are made against individual taxpayers.
One of the earmarks of the steady expansion of government at the New Jersey state level and the federal level is that more and more laws and regulations make it easier to find yourself in violation of them. It is similar to walking through a minefield: the more mines that are laid in your path, the more likely it is that you will finally step on one of them.
Fraud crimes are found in the New Jersey criminal statutes and under federal laws, as well. A broad definition of fraud would be the intentional use of deceit or deception by an individual for his or her personal or monetary benefit.
The general notion of forgery is of someone signing another person's name on a document for financial gain, such as writing a check on someone else's account or creating a fake will. While these examples are correct as far as they go, they do not capture the full meaning of how New Jersey defines the crime of forgery.
Many crime drama television programs feature scenes of contentious negotiations between prosecutors and defense attorneys as the latter attempt to find a way to reduce the charges or the possible punishment against their clients, commonly known as plea bargaining. But how does this concept work in actual practice when one is faced with federal charges?
If you have ever watched a movie on disc at home, then before or after the feature presentation you will see a notice warning about the perils of copyright infringement if you make an illegal copy of the movie. But what is a copyright, exactly, and what are the penalties if you are convicted of a copyright violation?
There is a saying, perhaps cynical, that "Character is what you are in the dark." In a sense, the Internet is one way in which this notion can find expression, based on the sense of anonymity that it can create. People may be tempted to write or even to do things online that they might not otherwise if they knew that they were being watched.
The proliferation of computers, smartphones and tablets has caused an explosion in the use people make of social media. Use of the Internet to share information with friends and acquaintances has vastly improved the ways in which people can communicate with each other. Unfortunately, social media has also given rise to Internet crime in the form of computer fraud, cyber terrorism, identity theft and cyber bullying.
In an earlier post we introduced the subject of how the concept of due process interacts with the criminal justice system. Although not all of the amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution are related to procedural due process, the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments are directly connected to it. We will briefly cover each of these amendments going forward, starting with the 4th Amendment.
The plethora of federal laws and regulations that apply to you is probably not something that you give much thought to on any given day. But perhaps you should, for you might not realize that you may be committing criminal violations practically all the time and not even be aware of it - until someone from the federal government agency accuses you of having committed a crime, at which point it is too late to avoid it.