RICO Statute
RICO is an acronym. It stands for "Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations." The unabbreviated name is the heading of a chapter in Title 18 of the United States Code.
RICO has been characterized as "the most important substantive and procedural law tool in the history of organized-crime control." It is particularly important because it changed the way in which cases involving organized crime are investigated and prosecuted: it encourages investigators "to think in terms of gathering evidence and obtaining indictments against entire 'enterprises like each organized crime family," and it allows prosecutors to present at trial "a complete picture of what the defendant was doing and why -- instead of the artificially fragmented picture that traditional criminal law demands." JAMES B. JACOBS, CHRISTOPHER PANARELLA & JAY WORTHINGTON, BUSTING THE MOB: United States v. Cosa Nostra 9-10 (1994)
Two of RICO's substantive subsections are clearly concerned with the infiltration of legitimate businesses by organized crime: they prohibit both
(a) using income derived from racketeering activity (defined in terms of a long litany of state and federal crimes to acquire an interest in an enterprise; and
(b) acquiring or maintaining control of the enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.
According to one view, the take-over of legitimate enterprises by organized crime was the specific evil, the principal harm, against which RICO was directed.
A further subsection (c) makes it a crime for anyone employed by or associated with an enterprise to conduct or participate in the affairs of the enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.
Arguably, this provision was aimed at racketeers who use a business to commit crimes once they have taken it over. But, read literally, it applies to anyone who commits a series of predicate crimes while conducting a business enterprise. The enterprise does not necessarily have to be a legal entity. It can be a "group of individuals associated in fact."
Thus, subsection (c) can be read to apply to anyone who engages in a pattern of racketeering activity as a member of a group. RICO has been used to greatest effect, like conspiracy, to prosecute those who commit crimes as part of a group. It goes beyond conspiracy, however, in that it permits the joinder of members of a group who are too loosely connected with each other to be considered parties to a single conspiratorial agreement.
It allows the prosecution to reach all members of the group in one trial, to expose the full scope of the organization, to "present a complete picture of a large-scale, ongoing, organized-crime group engaged in diverse rackets and episodic explosions of violence.".
