From the infamous college admissions scandal which made headlines last week to the woes of failed bio-tech giant Theranos, we are hearing and reading about the term “fraud” more and more frequently in the news. But what exactly does it mean from a legal standpoint? Is paying to play at an Ivy league school the same type of fraud as misleading investors and patients regarding cutting edge blood sampling equipment?
“Fraud is a crime that many people equate with theft, but there is a distinction. There is also a distinction between criminal fraud and civil fraud,” write Bochetto & Lentz in the blog post Criminal Fraud versus Civil Fraud: What’s the difference?