Stats on property crime?
June 18, 2010 7:29 PM Subscribe
Does the government report successful bank robberies? Accounting frauds? Counterfeit schemes? If it does report them, where?
I've always heard that the true extent of counterfeiting is not well known, and the Treasury Dept has no interest in making it well known, for obvious reasons. Is this true? Does it also apply to other property crimes? No, I'm not planning anything except a novel.
I've always heard that the true extent of counterfeiting is not well known, and the Treasury Dept has no interest in making it well known, for obvious reasons. Is this true? Does it also apply to other property crimes? No, I'm not planning anything except a novel.
The FBI releases bank robbery data quarterly. Here's the q4 2009, with the amount taken and the amount recovered.
posted by milkrate at 9:57 PM on June 18, 2010 [4 favorites]
posted by milkrate at 9:57 PM on June 18, 2010 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Thx both for valuable answers. I don't incline toward conspiracy theories, and I can certainly see bank robberies all being reported.
But what about more internal things, like accounting fraud? Assuming the victim company approaches the police -- they don't always do that, but they usually do -- I can see a case being made that the company has some right to privacy, and to not be cast publicly as a victim.
Counterfeiting is different from both, in that there's often no tangible victim other than society. In a case where the Treasury discovers a "counterfeit money infestation" -- 500 fake 20s show up in Duluth, then another 500 in Twin Cities, all from the same batch -- do they announce it, with details? What if it's substantially bigger?
Another way authorities discover counterfeiting is when they find -- through a tip or some other way -- a big stash. Most likely it's moving down the supply chain, through various levels of mob, toward distribution. Do they always report it?
And then, extrapolating from their actual yearly catch, do they estimate how much funny money is in circulation?
posted by LonnieK at 10:48 AM on June 19, 2010
But what about more internal things, like accounting fraud? Assuming the victim company approaches the police -- they don't always do that, but they usually do -- I can see a case being made that the company has some right to privacy, and to not be cast publicly as a victim.
Counterfeiting is different from both, in that there's often no tangible victim other than society. In a case where the Treasury discovers a "counterfeit money infestation" -- 500 fake 20s show up in Duluth, then another 500 in Twin Cities, all from the same batch -- do they announce it, with details? What if it's substantially bigger?
Another way authorities discover counterfeiting is when they find -- through a tip or some other way -- a big stash. Most likely it's moving down the supply chain, through various levels of mob, toward distribution. Do they always report it?
And then, extrapolating from their actual yearly catch, do they estimate how much funny money is in circulation?
posted by LonnieK at 10:48 AM on June 19, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Incidentally, here's a note on the reliability of counterfeiting and fraud statistics that may be of interest to you.
Of course, it's possible that the federal government is engaged in a massive plot to withhold information from the public by publishing false statistics. Anything's possible. But I don't have a whole lot of faith in the federal government's ability to do much of anything without screwing it up at least a little, so I feel pretty safe in saying that some time in the last 80 years, they'd have bumbled that attempt to perpetrate a huge fraud on the public.
posted by decathecting at 8:49 PM on June 18, 2010