Wow! Ok so what I get out of that is that Feinstein's aide took funds meant for campaigning and moved portions of the money around so that you didn't immediately notice where the money was going and then used it for her own purchases and employee payrolls. Not to mention the fact that she has done this to several people and only recently was caught. Then she admits to the fact that she did all this. I would just off the top of my head call this a white collar crime rather then a corporate crime. My reasoning being that it would seem that it was only Durkee involved from what is talked about in the article.
I agree with you Rebecca that this crime is more of a white collar crime than a corporate crime considering the fact that Durkee was the only one moving portions of the money around in order to use it for her own personal good rather than to benefit the company. It's shocking to see that she has done this to so many other people and is barely getting caught since it seems like the amount of money that she was moving around is a fairly large amount and no one has really noticed until now. I can't believe that she actually admitted that she has been doing this for years with all of her clients. I hope they find out exactly what all she used the money on and make her pay it back.
Very interesting fraud case! Not to mention that back in 2009, Feinstein was accused of corruption when her husband's real estate company was awarded a lucrative federal agency contract; therefore meaning that Feinstein has been around fraud and corruption for quite a while. Rebecca and Lisa mention how unbeleivable it is that Feinstein has done this to so many individuals. Well this goes back to chapter 1 which basis on the discovery of white collar crime, regarding to *trust*. The book states that, "Trust and its violation are certainly key elements of white collar crime". Well in this case, a central attribute is the violation of trust. However, individuals didn't know what or when she was messing with their money and automatically gave her that earn of trust. I come into agreement with Rebecca and Lisa, that this is a white collar crime, a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his/her occupation.
It doesn’t matter what kind of occupation you have nowadays all people want is money and they will do anything to increase their capital, even if that means breaking the law. Do people not have morals anymore, or any kind of respect? People are so self-centered these days and so greedy. Here is a very interesting fraud case which includes a very trusted individual who committed unlawful acts. This article did not put any blame on Senator Feinstein but did in fact put the blame on her aide Kinde Durkee. Durkee used the funds to pay off her own bills. How dull can she be? I do not know the relationship between Durkee and the senator but something fishy is going on. Maybe they both had some agreement with the funds or maybe the senator was clueless. Everyone seems to believe that the crime committed was a white collar crime but if the senator was secretly involved then it could be a corporate crime, but who knows? Durke should definitely be further investigated since she has had a previous record of unlawful acts.
As mentioned previously this seems like a case that can be appropriately classified into the white collar crime category. Feinstein was in placed in a respectable position and was entrusted with large sums of money that were not meant to be at her disposal. She took advantage of this by paying her own bills, among other things, without the consent or authority to do so. The fact that it had been going on for so long leaves me to wonder how and why she thought she could get away with it! Surely at some point she would have thought that disbursement of funds and transfers to personal accounts would have been looked at. With electronic transfers, fingerprints are left that cannot be wiped clean. Anyone, with the authority to do so, could easily go in and see where the money is moved. Needless to say, even smart criminals are stupid.
This is what happens when there is one person that has excess to several campaign accounts. It seems that someone would have noticed that this was happening. This is a perfect example of why you do not leave one person with their hands in the cookie jar. I do not understand why any politician would allow something like this to happen. There is always just basic ways of preventing something like this from happening. Making sure there are two or more signatures on a bank draft, deposits or any transaction that involves money-changing hands. There should have been red flags all over the place when this one woman, Kinde Durkee, had signature authority for more than 400 accounts! Can you tell me there is a problem with this? If Kinde has stolen or misappropriated $670,000 from one politician, can you only imagine how much money she has stolen over the years? I also think this woman should have to work, sell her assets and any other means necessary to repay all the money owed to others. Something needs to stop people from committing corporate and white-collar crimes. Maybe one way is to make public examples of those caught and convicted of their crime.
White collar crime for sure. This woman stole money and went unnoticed for years. How is that even possible? These are the type of people that give the political side a bad name. Why is it that people can't work hard for their money? Instead, they steal. Americans work and pay their bills and people we are supposed to be looking up to or people we are trusting with out communities are the ones who are committing crimes and making themselves look bad. They are the ones we look to for change and they are making the problems that we want changed. People who make a good sum of money are only thinking about money. They are greedy and selfish. I blame their parents. Just kidding. I just don't see how they get slaps on the wrist or fined. Someone out there needs to be doing something and I don't doubt that the person that does handle this stuff is out there committing corporate or white collar crime too. The system is flawed and I am very interested in taking my career into this area, so maybe I can help fix these problems.
Well if they sign the release which indemnifies the bank against lawsuits does it also include the people named as accomplices? I guess the lack of a check and balance as to the funds handled by her TRUSTED treasurer let the greed factor devise a convoluted plan to lighten the finances of Senator Dianne Feinstein. Kinde has admitted to the wrong doing and now all that is left is the dotting of the “I’s” and crossing of the “T’s” by the FBI before her trial begins. Looking at Ms. Feinstein’s background she is no stranger to corruption or “White Collar Crime”. It all sounds too CLEAN to me, perhaps Kinde is taking the fall for trying to hide things that her friend, Dianna, had illegal dealings and this is an agreed quick fix. Misappropriating funds, in the everyday world doesn’t that mean stealing money? Well I hope she enjoyed Disneyland and the Animal clinic, because it sounds like she will be curtailed in her activities, doesn’t that sound better than locked in jail?
This is a white collar crime, but the sad thing is it happens more than people know. It seems that Durkee has been doing this for a while, and it hasn’t taken all this time to get caught. I have heard of bank tellers skimming hundredths of a penny off of deposits and ending up with hundreds of thousands of dollars, because it takes quite a while to actually catch on to what is happening. People who commit these sorts of crimes are good at hiding it. That is why I always balance my checkbook to the penny, my husband finds that weird, but you can never be too careful when it comes to your own money. There should have been controls in place to prevent this from happening, such as requirement of multiple signatures on checks, someone else reconciling the bank statement. There are ways of preventing this from happening; the company just needs to implement the correct controls that would have prevented this from happening.
This was a very interesting article about fraud. Even though Durkee moved funds around just to steal them, it puzzles me on why no one verified that the funds were actually being used on what was stated. I understand that she might have portrayed herself as a very trustworthy person, but when you allow someone to oversee funds in that amount, it should be closely monitored. We see every day in the news how many officials embezzle money, and some people have yet to take precautions needed in order to prevent this type of thing from happening to them. I believe that Mrs. Durkee should be prosecuted to the fullest, and be made to pay restitution to the people that she stole from. Hopefully people would read this article and start being more cautious about whom they let handle funds, and start monitoring funds more closely.
Wow! Ok so what I get out of that is that Feinstein's aide took funds meant for campaigning and moved portions of the money around so that you didn't immediately notice where the money was going and then used it for her own purchases and employee payrolls. Not to mention the fact that she has done this to several people and only recently was caught. Then she admits to the fact that she did all this.
ReplyDeleteI would just off the top of my head call this a white collar crime rather then a corporate crime. My reasoning being that it would seem that it was only Durkee involved from what is talked about in the article.
I agree with you Rebecca that this crime is more of a white collar crime than a corporate crime considering the fact that Durkee was the only one moving portions of the money around in order to use it for her own personal good rather than to benefit the company. It's shocking to see that she has done this to so many other people and is barely getting caught since it seems like the amount of money that she was moving around is a fairly large amount and no one has really noticed until now. I can't believe that she actually admitted that she has been doing this for years with all of her clients. I hope they find out exactly what all she used the money on and make her pay it back.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting fraud case! Not to mention that back in 2009, Feinstein was accused of corruption when her husband's real estate company was awarded a lucrative federal agency contract; therefore meaning that Feinstein has been around fraud and corruption for quite a while. Rebecca and Lisa mention how unbeleivable it is that Feinstein has done this to so many individuals. Well this goes back to chapter 1 which basis on the discovery of white collar crime, regarding to *trust*. The book states that, "Trust and its violation are certainly key elements of white collar crime". Well in this case, a central attribute is the violation of trust. However, individuals didn't know what or when she was messing with their money and automatically gave her that earn of trust. I come into agreement with Rebecca and Lisa, that this is a white collar crime, a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his/her occupation.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn’t matter what kind of occupation you have nowadays all people want is money and they will do anything to increase their capital, even if that means breaking the law. Do people not have morals anymore, or any kind of respect? People are so self-centered these days and so greedy. Here is a very interesting fraud case which includes a very trusted individual who committed unlawful acts. This article did not put any blame on Senator Feinstein but did in fact put the blame on her aide Kinde Durkee. Durkee used the funds to pay off her own bills. How dull can she be? I do not know the relationship between Durkee and the senator but something fishy is going on. Maybe they both had some agreement with the funds or maybe the senator was clueless. Everyone seems to believe that the crime committed was a white collar crime but if the senator was secretly involved then it could be a corporate crime, but who knows? Durke should definitely be further investigated since she has had a previous record of unlawful acts.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned previously this seems like a case that can be appropriately classified into the white collar crime category. Feinstein was in placed in a respectable position and was entrusted with large sums of money that were not meant to be at her disposal. She took advantage of this by paying her own bills, among other things, without the consent or authority to do so. The fact that it had been going on for so long leaves me to wonder how and why she thought she could get away with it! Surely at some point she would have thought that disbursement of funds and transfers to personal accounts would have been looked at. With electronic transfers, fingerprints are left that cannot be wiped clean. Anyone, with the authority to do so, could easily go in and see where the money is moved. Needless to say, even smart criminals are stupid.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when there is one person that has excess to several campaign accounts. It seems that someone would have noticed that this was happening. This is a perfect example of why you do not leave one person with their hands in the cookie jar. I do not understand why any politician would allow something like this to happen. There is always just basic ways of preventing something like this from happening. Making sure there are two or more signatures on a bank draft, deposits or any transaction that involves money-changing hands. There should have been red flags all over the place when this one woman, Kinde Durkee, had signature authority for more than 400 accounts! Can you tell me there is a problem with this? If Kinde has stolen or misappropriated $670,000 from one politician, can you only imagine how much money she has stolen over the years? I also think this woman should have to work, sell her assets and any other means necessary to repay all the money owed to others.
ReplyDeleteSomething needs to stop people from committing corporate and white-collar crimes. Maybe one way is to make public examples of those caught and convicted of their crime.
White collar crime for sure. This woman stole money and went unnoticed for years. How is that even possible? These are the type of people that give the political side a bad name. Why is it that people can't work hard for their money? Instead, they steal. Americans work and pay their bills and people we are supposed to be looking up to or people we are trusting with out communities are the ones who are committing crimes and making themselves look bad. They are the ones we look to for change and they are making the problems that we want changed. People who make a good sum of money are only thinking about money. They are greedy and selfish. I blame their parents. Just kidding. I just don't see how they get slaps on the wrist or fined. Someone out there needs to be doing something and I don't doubt that the person that does handle this stuff is out there committing corporate or white collar crime too. The system is flawed and I am very interested in taking my career into this area, so maybe I can help fix these problems.
ReplyDeleteWell if they sign the release which indemnifies the bank against lawsuits does it also include the people named as accomplices? I guess the lack of a check and balance as to the funds handled by her TRUSTED treasurer let the greed factor devise a convoluted plan to lighten the finances of Senator Dianne Feinstein. Kinde has admitted to the wrong doing and now all that is left is the dotting of the “I’s” and crossing of the “T’s” by the FBI before her trial begins. Looking at Ms. Feinstein’s background she is no stranger to corruption or “White Collar Crime”. It all sounds too CLEAN to me, perhaps Kinde is taking the fall for trying to hide things that her friend, Dianna, had illegal dealings and this is an agreed quick fix. Misappropriating funds, in the everyday world doesn’t that mean stealing money? Well I hope she enjoyed Disneyland and the Animal clinic, because it sounds like she will be curtailed in her activities, doesn’t that sound better than locked in jail?
ReplyDeleteThis is a white collar crime, but the sad thing is it happens more than people know. It seems that
ReplyDeleteDurkee has been doing this for a while, and it hasn’t taken all this time to get caught. I have heard of bank tellers skimming hundredths of a penny off of deposits and ending up with hundreds of thousands of dollars, because it takes quite a while to actually catch on to what is happening. People who commit these sorts of crimes are good at hiding it. That is why I always balance my checkbook to the penny, my husband finds that weird, but you can never be too careful when it comes to your own money.
There should have been controls in place to prevent this from happening, such as requirement of multiple signatures on checks, someone else reconciling the bank statement. There are ways of preventing this from happening; the company just needs to implement the correct controls that would have prevented this from happening.
This was a very interesting article about fraud. Even though Durkee moved funds around just to steal them, it puzzles me on why no one verified that the funds were actually being used on what was stated. I understand that she might have portrayed herself as a very trustworthy person, but when you allow someone to oversee funds in that amount, it should be closely monitored. We see every day in the news how many officials embezzle money, and some people have yet to take precautions needed in order to prevent this type of thing from happening to them. I believe that Mrs. Durkee should be prosecuted to the fullest, and be made to pay restitution to the people that she stole from. Hopefully people would read this article and start being more cautious about whom they let handle funds, and start monitoring funds more closely.
ReplyDelete