White-collar crime requires its malicious actors to have an in-depth understanding of the business, which entails processes, policies, positions, and people involved in each. Corporate, cyber, and environmental crime are each different categories of white-collar crime yet they are more similar than they are different in that they each require a position of authority or access in addition to an exploitative mindset which would allow for the potential perpetrator to go from malicious thinker to malicious actor. Since white-collar crimes don’t carry severe consequences due to being non-violent, the void of severity emboldens the malicious thinkers to cross the line, then become white-collar criminals who might serve a few months to a year in federal prison contingent upon conditions with regards to their cooperation with the authorities.

It’s a plausible argument that the people who commit white-collar crime have a predatory mindset which leads them to seek endeavors with vulnerable people of a certain type or niche market as their victim audience. They see the victims as means to an end and a resource to accomplish their greed-driven objectives, throwing money at the consequences of their actions with little regard for the loss of those affected.

In the movie, The Spill, and in chapter 11 of Brian Payne’s White-Collar Crime, BP continued to use old and unmaintained equipment until it caused an explosion and oil spill into the Gulf, which resulted in the death of employees and wildlife. This is a prime demonstration of a hybrid white-collar crime—corporate-environmental white-collar crime—due to the regulations which weren’t abided by on part of BP. BP put profits before people by way of avoiding overhead expense by using operating equipment well beyond its recommended lifetime

In chapter 11, it’s noted, “BP received criticism on a daily basis. The criticism targeted BP for misrepresenting various aspects of the response, underestimating the extent of the problem, paying out claims too slowly to affected workers, and having a flawed response plan.”(Payne) Hacking is known as the art of exploitation and has many forms or categories ranging from virtual attacks on networks and machines to physical, in-person, and verbal attacks utilizing social adaptiveness to (socially) engineer interactions for outcomes to their benefit. The terms hacker and cracker are used interchangeably but anyone who seeks to explore past the instruction manual can be considered to be a hacker; The term cracker is used to describe someone who is applying their propensity for hacking towards endeavors involving piracy, different types of phishing(social engineering), and other endeavors which would earn monetary compensation in an underground economy such as the dark web. Although hackers and crackers are usually self- taught, the motivation works in tandem the meticulous nature of their propensity to innovate and explore the nuances noticed through their attention to detail and the results of their experimentation with their tool(s) of choice.

White-collar criminals share the hacker mindset. The exploitative mindset of cyber white-collar criminals entails skillsets which spillover from other white-collar crime categories such as social engineering which is heavily utilized in corporate and environmental white-collar crimes by way of the media.

The media’s coverage of corporate crime has a lot to do with the public’s opinion of the topic which is based on the general reaction to the news which media outlets release. The people get their information regarding happenings of all violent crime and corporate crime but the latter is lacking in detail and it seems intentional. The media’s reasoning may be because a tarnished corporate image also tarnishes that of the reporting corporation, as many deem corporate In chapter 10 of White-Collar Crime, Brian Payne writes, “While the public may hold ambivalent views towards corporate crime, corporations engage in a number of actions to make sure that thought about the corporations criminal behavior are removed from the minds of future consumers and customers. Sometimes corporations change their names following corporate scandals.” (Payne)

Even with globalization, the collective of unelected individuals acting under the guise of providing the best solutions of the planet which has been known to result in wicked problems around the world such as widespread suicide of Indian farmers, and other problems amongst populations around the world stemming from solutions which seemed simple in proposition and implementation yet weren’t so in reality.(Shiva) All of these white-collar crimes lead to reactionary regulations which doesn’t fill the voids caused by the victims’ losses. The common denominator amongst all white-collar crime is the lenience on part of the government, and the media not making the government’s role known in the ordeals of wrongdoing.