That is absolutely true. I have an impression that the richer folk commit far more crimes and transgressions than the poor people - although I do not have numbers to support this impression. One of the main reasons of that situation, imho, is that the rich folk have more opportunities to break the rules and that they often develop a sense of entitlement to get what they want (i.e. they tend to believe that rules do not apply to them).
The main reasons why the crimes of the rich folk are less visible than those of the poor folk are:
(i) they are far less likely to be prosecuted, and even if they are, they are more likely to plea bargain; despite of what legal fundamentalists on this list and elsewhere may think, the criminal "justice" system in this country is run by prosecutors; judges and juries can only rubber stamp decisions made by prosecutors; on rare occasions they may refuse to rubber stamp these decisions, but they have no power whatsoever to bring charges against those people whom the prosecutors refuse to prosecute (i.e. the rich folk); the reasons why prosecutors do not prosecute the rich folk fall into three categories: organizational behavior known as satisficing (i.e. going the easiest way and doing only the necessary minimum); class solidarity with corporate white collar criminals; and the general structure of the criminal "justice" system which is designed to go after small time dope pushers rather than white collar and corporate criminals .
(ii) the crimes committed by the rich folk are less dramatic - they are mostly different forms of embezzlement and fraud or even seen as "high life" excesses rather than crimes - e.g. Elvis shooting up is portrayed as a "victim" a truck driver shooting up is seen as a dangerous criminal;
(iii) people who expose crime to the general public (jurnos) come from the same class as white collar/corporate criminals and thus are more sympathetic toward them than toward low class offenders.
A point of clarification - I am not arguing that people currently in prisons are mostly innocent but convicted because they are poor. I think most of them are guilty - and many of them (especially violent offenders) should be in prison. All I am saying is that the rich people are not prosecuted and convicted with the same zeal as the poor people. This does not mean that we should empty prisons, but that more people from higher echelons should be put there. A corollary of that is that some idiotic laws that put poor people behind bars should be junked - if only to make some prison cells available for the rich folk.
PS. I would not mind seeing some executions of corporate executives either.
Wojtek