Akey fact of white-collar crime is that we hear about only the very slim fraction of people who are caught cheating. most embezzlers lead quiet and theoretically happy lives; employees who steal company property are rarely detected. with street crime, meanwhile, that is not the case. a mugging or a burglary or a murder is usually tallied whether or not the criminal is caught. a street crime has a victim, who typically reports the crime to the police, who generate data, which in turn generate thousands of academic papers by criminologists, sociologists, and economists. but white-collar crime presents no obvious victim. in this excerpt, the authors present: