Corporate crime directly involves assets gained or lost by a corporation as a result of misconduct which can include but is not limited to; insider trading and falsifying financial records. While most corporate crimes end in civil court judgments, there are many cases which have been settled in criminal court. Ultimately, the nature of the crime itself will play an important role in whether or not federal prosecutors will consider pressing charges. Various corporations have been charged with a crime when their practices negatively impacted the environment, and individual executives have been prosecuted when their actions indicated gross misconduct.

Most corporate crimes revolve around illegal practices that are designed to gain investors, stock traders or executives a monetary gain. Famous examples of corporate crimes include the Enron scandal, which was a corporation that falsified its financial records to dupe both investors and its own employees into purchasing inflated shares of company stock. In the end, Enron went out of business, thousands of employees were laid off and lost their retirement funds and several key executives were prosecuted in criminal court.

While corporations can be sued in civil court for a number of reasons, there must be a pattern of egregiously corrupt behavior in order for criminal charges to be pressed. Several government agencies such as the Federal Communications Committee (FCC), Federal Trade Committee (FTC), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) keep close tabs on the actions and business practices of major corporations to ensure that there is no widespread misconduct.