In some cases, people who are facing conspiracy charges have already carried out the alleged act. For example, two executives could be accused of entering into a conspiracy to embezzle money from a corporation. Once the financial officers at the corporation realize that money is being siphoned out of their accounts, they follow the digital paper trail and discover who’s behind it.
But one important thing for people to know about conspiracy charges is that they do not require success. The conspiracy may not have even been carried out yet. A person could theoretically still face charges in many situations.
A plan and a concrete step
As a general rule, the court is going to consider something to be a criminal conspiracy when multiple people have agreed to work together and then have taken a step toward that criminal offense. As long as they did intend to break the law and have taken one step toward doing so, even if they haven’t broken the law yet, they could be charged with a conspiracy.
For example, perhaps the executives are going to use a specific software program to siphon money out of the company accounts. They agree to do this and one of them downloads the program and brings it to work on a flash drive. Their intentions are discovered before they actually have time to install the program and steal the money, but they still could face conspiracy accusations.
As you can see, these types of serious criminal charges in the corporate world can become very complex. If you are facing such allegations, you must understand exactly what legal defense options you have.