If California officers have arrested you for white-collar crimes, you stand to spend many years in jail or prison. You'll be away from your family during those times—missing special holidays and birthdays. What's more, incarceration will derail many of your dreams. It can even lead to a divorce if you're married and cause child custody issues if you're a parent. Fortunately, help is available.
Consider consulting with a California financial crimes lawyer as soon as you know of any investigation into you or charges that have been filed against you, whether in state or federal court. My Rights Law has experienced white-collar criminal defense lawyers who can explain your legal rights and options and defend you against these charges. Contact us by completing our secure web form today or call 888-702-8882 for a free case consultation.
White-collar crimes can be state or federal offenses. Regardless of whether the state or federal government brings the case against you, these crimes can devastate your life if you're found guilty. Your situation may worsen if prosecutors bring multiple white-collar crimes against you. The state can charge you with several white-collar offenses because some are closely related. If this happens and a judge decides to sentence you to consecutive terms, you'll serve one sentence after another, prolonging your stay.
You may wonder which crimes fall into this category. Below is not an exhaustive list, but it contains common crimes that state and federal law consider white-collar crimes. We'll expand on some of them later in this article.
Health care fraud is a useful child practice area within white-collar defense because an investigation can involve claims data, business records, professional judgment, multiple employees, and both state and federal authorities. The exact charge depends on the payer, alleged representation, person who made or caused it, and evidence of knowledge or intent. A billing audit, overpayment, coding disagreement, or documentation error does not automatically establish criminal fraud.
California Penal Code section 550 contains several separate insurance-fraud theories. Its health care benefit provisions address knowingly making or causing a false or fraudulent claim for payment, claiming a benefit not used by or for the claimant, presenting multiple claims for the same benefit with intent to defraud, and specified undercharge/overcharge reconciliation conduct. Those rules are explained in context on our California insurance fraud defense page. The prosecution still must prove the elements of the charged subdivision; a disputed code or correctable clerical mistake is not automatically a knowing false claim.
Section 550 also treats qualifying workers' compensation health-benefit claims as health care benefit claims for specified provisions. Cases involving treatment, utilization review, billing, referrals, or claim documentation in that system may overlap with California workers' compensation fraud defense. The criminal theory should be separated from an ordinary payment, medical-necessity, or administrative dispute.
18 U.S.C. section 1347 applies when a person knowingly and willfully executes, or attempts to execute, a scheme to defraud a health care benefit program or obtain program money or property through false or fraudulent pretenses in connection with health care benefits, items, or services. 18 U.S.C. section 1035 separately addresses knowingly and willfully falsifying or concealing a material fact, making a materially false statement, or using a materially false document in a health care matter. Scheme, materiality, knowledge, willfulness, causation, and the defendant's actual role are fact-specific.
The DOJ Health Care Fraud Unit describes a cross-agency model involving prosecutors and investigators that may include the FBI, HHS-OIG, CMS, DEA, and other agencies. A provider, owner, biller, marketer, pharmacist, or employee may first learn of a matter through an interview request, audit, subpoena, records demand, search warrant, or notice from a payer. When federal authorities are involved, the investigation and grand-jury process may require coordinated representation by a California federal defense lawyer.
Investigations can focus on conduct such as:
A company's receipt of payment does not by itself establish that every owner, manager, clinician, or staff member shared criminal intent. The defense analysis should identify who created, reviewed, transmitted, corrected, or relied on each record and claim.
The same facts can generate more than one proceeding. A criminal case is distinct from a civil False Claims Act matter seeking damages and civil penalties, an HHS-OIG administrative or exclusion matter, a payer recoupment process, or a professional licensing investigation. The HHS-OIG enforcement framework expressly separates criminal and civil actions, civil monetary penalties and exclusions, state actions, and self-disclosure resolutions. None of those labels alone proves a criminal offense.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants, and other licensees may also need to assess board reporting, complaint, credentialing, and discipline issues. Those collateral questions belong in a coordinated professional-license defense strategy. An arrest, audit, or complaint does not automatically suspend or revoke a license, and no particular board result can be promised.
A defense review may include claims files, remittance data, patient charts, EHR metadata and audit trails, coding rules, coverage criteria, supervision and delegation records, prescriptions, referral and marketing contracts, emails, texts, training, corrective actions, and communications with outside billers or consultants. Potential issues may include lack of knowledge or intent, services actually provided, reasonable clinical judgment, ambiguous coding guidance, reliance on qualified staff or advice, mistaken identity, incomplete sampling, unreliable data, or a failure to connect a particular person to a false claim or material statement.
Original records should be preserved when scrutiny is known or reasonably anticipated. Routine deletion may need to be suspended, but records should not be backdated, recreated, selectively removed, or “cleaned up.” Counsel can help identify custodians, preserve EHR audit information, respond to compulsory process, review privilege, prepare for interviews, and present relevant context when that serves the defense. These steps do not guarantee that an investigation will close or that charges will be avoided.
criminalizes intentionally passing off fraudulent documents as real when you know them to be fake, altered, or forged. Whether you sign for someone else without their authority, sign the name of a fake person, or publish any document with the intent to commit fraud, a prosecutor may file this charge against you. Note that documents can be anything that can help you defraud a person, franchise, or bank out of their rightfully held property, including:
The state may charge you with misdemeanor or felony forgery. If a jury convicts you of a misdemeanor, you could face one year in jail. If you’re convicted of a felony, you could face as many as three years behind bars.
Which defenses are applicable turn on the specifics of your unique case. Some defenses are viable in one scenario but not in another because there are many ways to commit forgery. It's best to consult with a knowledgeable forgery lawyer to learn more.
Under 26 U.S.C. § 7201, you commit tax evasion whenever you willfully use illegal means to avoid paying your taxes. For example, you may lie about whether your C Corp taxable business distributed income to its shareholders or retained it in the business. You may lie about your business' income to reduce the taxes you must pay to the Internal Revenue Service. Sometimes, you may exaggerate the cost of your tax deductions to owe the IRS less. Any time you purposely and intentionally try to avoid paying the government what you owe, you're committing a serious crime.
This felony is always a federal offense and is punishable by up to five years in prison or a fine of up to $100,000. You might have to pay up to $500,000 in fines if you're a corporation.
You may argue that you didn't know a certain term covered a monetary amount that you should've included on your tax form. On the other hand, you may have misinterpreted something to think that you didn't need to report certain information or that you could use an activity as a charitable deduction when, in fact, you couldn't. These instances are called "mistakes of fact." It occurs when you know you must do something but misunderstand all the facts or duties the obligation entails.
You likely made an honest mistake and reasonably believed that the numbers you reported to the IRS were accurate and true. Whether your paperwork was mixed up, someone gave you the wrong numbers, or your tax preparer erred, you can raise this defense.
It is illegal to knowingly possess or receive counterfeit checks while intending to use them to defraud someone or to complete the act of altering the checks, according to Penal Code 475. Under this statute, you may not knowingly possess an incomplete check or monetary device (e.g., money order, traveler's check, bank bill) with the intention to complete it so you can defraud someone.
Please note that it doesn't affect your case whether the check is real or fake. A prosecutor will charge you the same way, regardless.
Counterfeiting is a type of forgery crime as well as a white-collar crime. When a court finds you guilty of this offense, it finds you guilty of forgery. Misdemeanor forgery is punishable by up to one year in jail. Felony forgery is punishable by sixteen months, two years, or three years behind bars at the judge's discretion.
Whenever the state accuses you of a crime, it's advisable to tackle the elements of that crime's statute. The elements of a crime are what prosecutors must prove for a jury to find you guilty.
In this case, you could argue that you didn't knowingly possess counterfeit checks. Suppose a friend gave them to you and asked if you could deposit them for her because she didn't have time to stop by the bank before work. You had no reason to suspect that your friend was doing something criminal.
If you passed off bad checks under duress or unknowingly, you couldn't have had the criminal intent required for the crime. You didn't intend to defraud the state. Rather, you could've been forced to deposit the forged checks under threat of personal harm, or you did so unaware that someone forged the checks.
That gambling can be a crime may come as a shock considering California has some of the best casinos in the country. However, it's indeed illegal to gamble under some circumstances. California's Penal Code 330 criminalizes gambling when you take any action as an owner or employee (such as opening, playing, helping the illicit game to be carried on) to play any banking or percentage game using a device, such as cards or dice to acquire anything of monetary value like real property, cash, or checks.
Gambling with friends may seem harmless, but it's actually a misdemeanor offense. Suppose you and your friends conduct an illegal gambling ring in your basement every Thursday. Someone tips off the police. The police come to your home and arrest everyone there. Should you decide to plead guilty or suffer a guilty verdict at trial, you could face up to six months in jail. A judge can also order you to pay a fine from $100 to $1,000.
Fortunately, there are viable defenses for every crime, and you'll want to use them. Don't assume that misdemeanors are not significant enough to contact a lawyer about. You'll want a strategic lawyer to get you out of any situation that can give you a criminal record because this record can come back to haunt you when you least expect it.
One defense you may use is to argue that the game never involved winning anything of value. Remember that a gambling ring has to operate with the purpose of the players receiving money or something with monetary value. If you and your friends play card or dice games but don't play for real money (i.e., you play with paper money instead), that's hardly a crime.
White-collar crimes tried at the federal level (cases brought by the United States Attorney’s Office) tend to have lengthier sentences and more significant monetary penalties. The penalties for these violations of federal laws vary across the board, but we're just as equipped to help to fight against federal-level charges as we are against state-level charges. If you are also up against serious federal charges, contact us immediately.
You need an experienced law firm where criminal defense attorneys fight aggressively for you whenever you're facing criminal charges at risk of having your liberty stripped away. My Rights Law is that firm. And with a well-documented record of case victories, you know you're in good hands when you choose us. We promise to fight just as passionately for you as we have for all our satisfied clients, so don't wait any longer. Call our white collar crime attorneys for a confidential, free consultation now at 888-702-8882 or leave us a message on our secure web form.
Other financial crimes we defend include: Calfresh food stamps fraud, RICO fraud
This page was written by the My Rights Law Editorial Team and reviewed for legal accuracy by Bobby Shamuilian.
Attorney Shamuilian is the founder and managing partner of My Rights Law and is widely recognized as a legal authority, frequently appearing as a legal analyst and TV pundit on national news outlets.
He has earned a perfect “10.0 – Top Attorney” rating on AVVO and a “10.0” rating on Justia, and has been named among the “Top 40 Under 40” and the “Top 100 Trial Lawyers” by The National Trial Lawyers.
With his proven expertise and dedication, Mr. Shamuilian is committed to protecting your rights and achieving the best possible outcome for your case.
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