Let's look at the economic costs first.For example, if a company is producing fruit juice and it dilutes its product so that it's just a little below the concentration it should be,many millions of people may be paying a small amount extra for their carton of orange juice.Now small amounts like this may seem insignificant for individual customers - too small to worry about -but for the company this deception might result in massive illegal profit.However, all studies of corporate crime agree that the individuals are in fact deprived of far more money by such crime than they are by conventional crime like robbery and theft.
In addition to this, we have to consider the social costs of corporate crime and these are again very difficult to assess, but they are considerable.They're important because they can undermine the faith of the public in the business world and also, more importantly,because the main group of people they affect are, in fact, not the richer sections of society but the poorer,so here companies are robbing the poor to benefit the rich.