But we don't have to go international. In New Zealand, a businessman was recently charged with stealing $600,000 by making 42 false claims for the Covid wage subsidy. Ten other Serious Fraud Office investigations are under way – and even those are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg. Or, how about the Christchurch businessman who, last month, was convicted of taking PAYE from his employees and GST from clients, and pocketing the more-than-$300,000 himself?
The magnitude can also be seen in New Zealand's asset forfeitures or restraints. The excellent work by Matt Nippert highlighted that, for all of the talk of gangs, just one on the list of the top nine people who have had assets seized or frozen was a gang member; the other eight were businessmen. Furthermore, the alleged illegal assets of the gang member made up just 3 per cent of the total assets of those on the list (the combined amount of proven or alleged ill-gotten gain of the nine was some $322 million).
Yet these types of crimes don't boil the blood of the public, nor create great discussion around watercoolers like ram-raids or gangs do, and consequently they aren't a significant focus for politicians. Accordingly, we don't fund counter-efforts well enough to come even remotely close to tackling them.
Why is this? In large part it's about perception. Businesspeople don't conform to the colloquial idea of who a criminal is and what they look like. And this is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The crimes don't stoke public condemnation, aren't reported or discussed, and therefore aren't a significant focus for the country.
Indeed, I'd hazard a guess most people reading this aren't currently swayed by my arguments, at least in part because they are so seldom made; whereas other forms of crimes and criminals dominate the news. We naturally perceive the greatest threats as the ones we most commonly hear about.
Another reason white-collar criminals don't get the attention they deserve is that often the victims are faceless.
When the crimes involve government funds, for example, the crime seems victimless - but in reality, that is people enriching themselves at the expense of all of us. Interestingly, it's not the attitude we have to those who defraud the beneficiary system, even though the amounts are less by many, many multitudes.
More than that, there are often individual people who get utterly wrecked by white-collar crime. Take the case of David Ross, who ripped off hundreds of investors to the tune of more than $115m. He was paroled after six years in prison, having been sentenced to serve the longest term for fraud in New Zealand's history. It was a long stint in prison, but it pales in comparison to what a serious drug dealer would receive – despite the fact, as one of his victims said, Ross had effectively sentenced "hundreds of people to great financial loss and great suffering".
Drug dealers peddle misery, but losing your life savings can be equally devastating. Furthermore, such crimes undermine trust in the financial sector and therefore have innumerable flow-on effects. This is particularly true when one considers the findings of a 2018 report which found that 51 per cent of New Zealand organisations had experienced economic crime.
If you're still unconvinced about the seriousness of white-collar criminality, then I have one more reason to pursue it with greater vigour – it makes money.
At the beginning of the millennium, Greg Newbold calculated that for every dollar the IRD spends on auditing corporates, it gets a $12 return. With changes to the asset forfeiture legislation, it has also become increasingly easy to take ill-gotten gains, and this not only is justice achieved, but it is also a very tidy earner for the state.
However, until such time the community clamours for action – in the same way we do on less important issues – then very little will change.
• Dr Jarrod Gilbert is a sociologist at the University of Canterbury and the Director of Independent Research Solutions.
