The crime of conspiracy occurs when two or more people form an agreement to commit a crime. Conspiracy law requires that the parties involved conspired to engage in an illegal act, and had a general intent to break the law. A criminal conspiracy occurs when two people plan and agree to participate in a criminal act, and one person engages in the criminal activity in furtherance of the plan.

The crime of a conspiracy is the agreement between the two or more people to commit an illegal act. The success of the plan can be irrelevant. For example if two people plan to commit murder, but the murder is prevented, the crime of conspiracy still exists.

When being charged with a conspiracy it is not required that all parties to the conspiracy be known or charged with the crime. For example, paying someone to kill another person constitutes a conspiracy between the person with the money and the person with the gun. If only the hit man is found and charged with the murder and the payee is unknown by the police or the identity is even unknown by the hit man, a conspiracy still exists.

Individuals can be charged with conspiracy even if they had a small part in the overall crime, if they can be proven to have general knowledge of the nature of the crime and the intentionally played a part in the plan. It is not necessary that they know all the details or even all the members of the conspiracy to be charged with the crime.

Conspiracy laws can help prosecutors of criminal activity when it is unknown which person involved in the crime actually committed the illegal act. For example, if two people conspire to rob a bank. One person waits in the get-away-car while the other enters the bank and robs it. The two are later found, but it cannot be determined who was the driver and who was the robber, both people are charged with conspiracy. It is not necessary for prosecutors to prove exactly which individual participated in which illegal acts to gain a conviction.

Corporations and governments can also be engaged in conspiracies. If corporations conspire with each other to form a monopoly, it can be a corporate conspiracy. Anti-trust laws were established to prevent corporate conspiracies that would hurt consumers through the restraint of trade, price fixing or by reducing competitive markets.

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