| White-collar crime in the form of fraud in the subprime mortgage market has been credited with contributing to the current global financial crisis. Subprime lending is a relatively new phenomenon, and its use and abuse spread rapidly throughout the financial industry over the past two decades. This project examines (1) the growth in subprime lending and fraud in the United States mortgage industry; (2) how industry practitioners perceived, utilized, and reinvented the subprime innovation for legitimate and fraudulent use; and (3) the potential of contemporary criminological and diffusion theories to extend our understanding of white-collar crime opportunity structures. Using diffusion of innovations theory as an interpretive framework, insight into how and why opportunities diffuse throughout a business system is provided, and the opportunity perspective of white-collar crime is extended. |
