Yet RICO was never used until the old bosses died, even if it already existed when they were still around, and those who lived long enough like Accardo were never convicted.
RICO was around, but it wasn't used widely until Reagan took office in 1980. And it wasn't used effectively until the Commission trial in 1986 (when Giuliani and Blakey showed prosecutors how to effectively use it).
As far as the government not getting a RICO conviction on any of the old timers, you're forgetting about Tony Salerno, who was only a few years younger than Gambino and Accardo. And had Big Paul lived, he certainly would have been convicted in that case as well.
Ivy is 100 percent right about this. If those old timers were dealing with a RICO Act, a Witness Protection Program, electronic surveillance and a modern day CSI team, things certainly would have been different.
Now I still agree that those old guys were cut from a different cloth and that they were more effective than their modern day counterparts, but they would have their hands full, too, if they were living in today's world.
