Sin City’s Most Common White Collar Crimes

Everyone and anyone knows Las Vegas has a nickname: Sin City.

From the extensive strip littered with casinos to the vibrant nightlife oozing with temptation, Las Vegas is notoriously a city where people go to have fun, but it’s also a city notorious for encouraging vices. It’s safe to say Vegas is riddled with vice, and consequently, there is a lot of crime in the city.

The crime rate in Las Vegas is above the national average, unsurprisingly. According to City Data, crime in Vegas is actually higher than 89.4% of other US cities. The good news? Crime in Vegas has been on the decline for the last few years, settling around 1.3 times the average crime rate of US cities. Crimes like murder, robbery, assault, buglary, and theft are included in this crime rate.

But how does Sin City stack up against other major cities when it comes to white collar crimes?

It’s easy to figure that Las Vegas may be home to violent and deadly crimes considering the casino, nightlife, and legality of prostitution in Nevada (even though it’s not legal in Clark County), but with the amount of businesses in the city, white collar (or business related) crimes are also common. In fact, white collar crime is fairly common all around the country.

With this in mind, the team at Summit Defense analyzed data from the US Treasury in order to determine the cities across the country with the most white collar crimes that include theft, forgery, and embezzlement.

Las Vegas ranks within the top 25 cities with the most white collar crimes committed in the country. Specifically, Vegas comes in at #15 for most overall white collar crimes committed. What’s interesting is that this study shows Las Vegas is the number one city in the entire country for crimes of embezzlement. For every 10,000 Vegas residents, 21.17 crimes of embezzlement are committed. Surprisingly, the city with the least amount of embezzlement crimes per 10,000 residents is Washington, D.C.

In terms of other white collar crimes, Las Vegas comes in 10th when it comes to identity theft and 14th for crimes of forgery.

You can view the whole study here.