Comparative studies of white-collar crime in Korea and Canada especially regarding MOVC (Multiple Ordinary Victims Crime)

In liberal democracies with advanced industrial/technological economies, the recent emergence of highly complex business frauds often utilizing social networks and information dissemination have victimized large numbers of ordinary citizens. These crimes have become particularly controversial in the Republic of Korea, not only because of widespread victimization but also their links to political corruption and major business enterprises. A new term for these types of crime is Multiple Ordinary Victims Crime (MOVC). New criminal code categories similarly have been proposed in other countries. MOVC criminal justice investigation procedures consequently also have had to be adjusted for gathering potentially incriminating information. Because of the common use of the internet and online banking for complex fraud cases or MOVCs, investigative access to cell phones and other similar devices obtaining judicial warrant access to them has become critical. Yet such information requires strict adherence to strict procedural criteria for prosecutors' ability to use this information in the indictment and trial stages. The major hypothesis in this thesis is that MOVC cases often involve global or cross national financial and business transactions, and, despite fundamental cultural differences such as oriental and occidental and legal systems such as common law and code-based law, liberal democratic criminal justice systems laws and investigative procedures likely have converged. To explore this hypothesis, the Canadian and Korean criminal justice models and illustrative cases for investigating and prosecuting complex business frauds such as contemporary Ponzi, wireless and cryptocurrency schemes are utilized. Semi-structured interviews with six ROK investigators and prosecutors and six Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers and prosecutors provide in-depth qualitative information on both common and distinctive national challenges in the investigation of MOVCs in these culturally diverse countries. These data suggest necessarily tentative support for the above major thesis hypothesis given the inherent limits of the findings based on a two-country comparative case study and qualitative research design.