Williamsport Pennsylvania Criminal Defense Law Blog

A single event can change multiple people's lives in an instant. You may have anticipated a particular situation to go a certain way, but in the end, it turned out substantially different from anything you could have predicted. Unfortunately for you, this life-changing event left you facing serious criminal charges.

You may never have believed that you could have ended up in a situation that resulted in you facing charges for murder. Now, you wonder what will happen to the rest of your life due to the death of another.

Whether you realize it or not, you probably know of some white collar criminals. Many of them are celebrities or high-profile political figures. Think Martha Stewart, Lori Laughlin, Charles Ponzi (the namesake of the well-known "Ponzi scheme") and Bernie Madoff, just to name a few. As evidenced by these cases, white collar crime is almost always financially motivated, and manifests by way of deceit, bribery, and manipulation. In this post, we identify four of the most prominent examples of this type of criminal activity.

We will begin with the act of fraud. Fraud occurs when a person misrepresents facts for any type of gain. It includes making known false statements with the intent to deceive. It becomes a crime when the victim believed and relied on that information, which ultimately caused he or she to suffer an actual loss of some sort. Usually the loss in financial in nature. A second type of white collar crime is known as insider trading. This occurs when a party buys or sells stock or securities using information obtained from someone "on the inside." For example, if an executive offers information to a lower level employee that has not yet been made public, and that information influences the employee to buy or sell, then insider trading has occurred.

Amid an ongoing spate of horrifying acts of gun violence, lawmakers are discussing ways to limit access to guns by dangerous people. One proposal is to require mandatory background checks for all gun sales. Activists say that many sales take place over the Internet, where sellers don't necessarily know who the buyers are, and buyers don't necessarily know where the sellers got the guns in the first place.

Recent charges against a Pennsylvania man help illustrate some of the issues involved. Federal prosecutors charged the man with selling machine guns, other firearms and a huge amount of ammunition that were allegedly stolen from a federal storage facility. Federal agents said they seized about 100 guns, almost 124,000 rounds of ammunition and other material in a search.

Most drivers are, or should be, aware of the so-called legal limit. Under Pennsylvania law, and the law of every other state, it is illegal for drivers over age 21 to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or higher. Police who detain a driver can administer a BAC test. Drivers consent to these tests in advance, when they receive a driver's license. Any driver found to have a BAC of 0.08% BAC is said to have committed DUI per se. However, there is a lot more to the way Pennsylvania DUI law treats BAC.

Pennsylvania law recognizes three levels of DUI: General Impairment, High BAC and Highest BAC. General impairment refers to a BAC of 0.08%-0.99%. High BAC covers 0.10%-0.159%, and Highest BAC covers 0.16% or higher. Each category represents a different tier of penalties, with progressively higher penalties in each category, especially when the defendant has prior offenses.