Corporate crime is crime committed by corporations against others in society, usually customers, employees, or the communities they operate in. Other types of corporate crime include crimes that damage the environment and crimes related to political influence-peddling, such as bribery.

Image: SEIU International

"Corporate crime" is often used interchangeably with "white-collar crime," although the latter usually indicates crimes by individuals who work for corporations (usually executives in a prestigious position) who commit crimes against the corporation (e.g. embezzlement) or other stakeholders in the firm (e.g. accounting fraud leading to damage to shareholders). The accounting fraud and other types of lawbreaking that caused Enron to collapse, for example, were types of white collar crime. (For the history of Enron, check out Kert Eichenwald’s book, Conspiracy of Fools)

While federal efforts to track white collar crime have improved, there has been no attempt to systematically track corporate crime - especially crimes committed against consumers, employees, and the environment.

Corporate Crime Reporter: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com
Center for Corporate Policy http://corporatepolicy.org/issues/crime.htm
David O. Friedrichs, Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society (3rd Ed.). Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.
Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime and Violence, Sierra Club Books 1988.
Marshall B. Clinard and Peter C. Yeager, Corporate Crime (updated). Transaction Publishers, 2006.

Anti-trust: "Antitrust" generally refers to the variety of laws, regulations and court decisions that govern business competition in the United States. Starting with the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) , they were initially created in response to the Standard Oil Trust and other giant industrial "trusts" that dominated business sectors in the late-19th century.
Different antitrust laws and regulations have defined a variety of antitrust violations, including bid rigging, boycotts and exclusions, market and customer allocation, monopoly offenses, price fixing and tying arrangements.
The American Antitrust Institute has collected a good set of primers on antitrust laws and related policies.

Price Fixing: One of the more commonly recognized antitrust violations, "price fixing" is an understanding or agreement between two or more sellers resulting in a set price (or range of prices) for specific goods or services. Fixed prices artificially inflate the cost for buyers, who would otherwise enjoy lower prices as a result of market competition. In "The Informant," executives from ADM and other companies fixed the global price for lysine.

Price fixing covers any related factor that affects price, including discounts, rebates, or delivery charges. Although price fixing can result in identical prices, it is not essential that prices be identical for price fixing to occur.

Price fixing sometimes results in criminal sanctions. There are different types of price fixing, usually described as either "horizontal" or "vertical." Horizontal price fixing refers to an understanding between competitors dealing in the same products or services in the same geographic market or markets. Vertical price fixing refers to an understanding between two buyers/sellers in a chain of distribution.

Image: LIFE. Electrical industry execs. in jail for price fixing. 1961

In 2004, ADM paid $400 million to settle charges that it conspired to fix the price of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener used in sodas and other food. At the time of the settlement, ADM had one-third of the HFCS market, with Staley (a subsidiary of UK-based Tate & Lyle) controlling 20 percent of the market (Staley paid $100 million to settle its role in the charges; Cargill -- the third defendant in the case -- paid $24 million). The settlement came before the case was scheduled to go to trial, after an appellate court overruled a lower court’s summary judgment in favor of ADM and remanded the case for trial.

The case was originally filed in 1995 by more than 20 plaintiffs, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. HFCS represents 40 percent of caloric sweeteners added to food and beverages, and is the leading caloric sweetener used in American soft drinks. One study found that the consumption of HFCS use grew 1000 percent between 1970 and 1990. ("Sweetener settlement for ADM," 6/18/04 at http://www.foodnavigator.com/Financial-Industry/Sweetener-settlement-for-ADM)

Sanctions: When convicted of a crime, corporations cannot be thrown in jail or otherwise punished like people. As Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow observed centuries ago, (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1288201), "Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to kick?"

Corporations convicted of a crime are usually fined. ADM, for instance, in the 1990s paid the seventh largest fine of any large corporation for its 1996 lysine conviction - $100 million. (For a list of the top 100, go here)
Although the courts are encouraged to use a limited range of sanctions under the law (and through Department of Justice guidance), in fact a variety of sanctions are possible, including equity fines, publicity (i.e. requirements that the corporation announce in major media outlets what it did and what it will do to make restitution), and even (where the crime is extreme, or a pattern of criminal behavior is established) the "corporate death penalty" (i.e. charter revocation and disposition through receivership). To learn more about cracking down on corporate crime, go here.