Civil and Criminal RICO: An Overview of the Statute and Its Operation
![handle is hein.journals/defcon64 and id is 38 raw text is: Civil and Criminal RICO: An Overview
of the Statute and Its Operation
After an uncertain start, RICO now is doing the job for which
it was designed-working toward a more just society
Under RICO, no matter who ... we
are, if we're together, they'll get every...
one of us.
-L.C.N. boss Gennaro Angiulo, over-
heard on a bug at 98 Prince Street in Bos-
ton in 1981 speaking to his brother,
Donato, as quoted in United States v.
Cintolo, 818 F.2d 980, 984-85 (lst Cir.),
cert. denied, 484 U.S. 913 (1987).
[N]o one really knows a law thor-
oughly unless he knows what the courts
have made of it.
-Morris R. Cohen, Law and the So-
cial Order 133 (1932).
By G. Robert Blakey and John Robert
Blakey
IN 1970, Congress enacted the Organized
Crime Control Act, Title IX of which is the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organi-
zations Act, known popularly as RICO, 18
U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968. RICO was drafted to
deal with enterprise criminality,' that is,
patterns of violence, the provision of il-
legal goods and services, corruption in the
labor or management relations, corruption
in government, and criminal fraud by,
through, or against various types of licit or
illicit enterprises. Because Congress
found that the sanctions and remedies
available were unnecessarily limited in
scope and impact, it enacted RICO to pro-
vide enhanced criminal and civil sanctions,
1. United States v. Cauble, 706 F.2d 1322, 1330
(5th Cir. 1983).
2. 18 U.S.C. §§ 1963, 1964(c).
3. Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 26
(1983).
4. United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 590-
91(1981).
G. Robert Blakey is William J. and
Dorothy O'Neill Professor of Law at the
Notre Dame Law School. He received
B.A. and J.D. degrees from Notre Dame.
He was chief counsel of the Subcommittee
on Criminal Laws and Procedure of the
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary,
which was responsible for processing the
Organized Crime Control Act of 1970,
Title IX of which is known as RICO.
John Robert Blakey, formerly an asso-
ciate at Vedder, Price, Kaufman &
Kammholz in Chicago, now an assistant
state's attorney of Cook County, Illinois,
also attended Notre Dame University, re-
ceiving a B.A. in 1988 and a J.D. in 1992.
He earned a C.F.A. in 1989 from the Lon-
don Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
This is an edited and condensed version
of a paper presented at the 1996 IADC
annual meeting.
including fines, imprisonment, forfeiture,
injunctions, and treble damage relief for
person[s] injured in their business or
property by reason of' a violation of the
statute.2
The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that
the legislative history of RICO clearly
demonstrates that ... [it] was intended to
provide new weapons of unprecedented
scope for an assault upon organized crime
and its economic roots.3 But the Court
also has declared that while the major pur-
pose of RICO is to address the infiltration
of legitimate business by organized crime,
the statute was designed to reach both il-
legitimate and legitimate enterprises,4
the Court observing in H.J. Inc. v. North-
western Bell Telephone Co. that the notion
that RICO is limited to organized crime](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/defcon64&div=14&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Civil and Criminal RICO: An Overview of the Statute and Its Operation
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