Like the fact that a lot of them during the Goodfellas/Donnie Brasco era were junkies. Jimmy Burke was every bit the speed freak that Henry was, but it wouldn't have fit in with the way DeNiro wanted him portrayed by Scorsese (although DeNiro certainly could have pulled it off).

Same goes for the Tommy character. The guy was wired 24/7. That's what made that crew so unpredictably violent: the paranoia associated with coming down from speed and coke. But again, to Scorsese's credit, he knew that "What do yo mean I'm funny?" and "Ma, I meet a nice one almost every night" made the character more appealing.

I think what Scorsese was doing was waiting for the third act to expose them and have the world come falling down on them. And as far as cinema goes, it was brilliant. But in real life, these guys don't wait for the third act to show you who they really are and what they're really capable of.

I also want to note that not all of them are like those particular guys. The older you get, the more you realize that there's a lot of grey area to life. And in THAT particular life, there are degrees of "badness." For instance, a bookmaker shouldn't be named in the same indictment as a guy charged with three murders just because the money got funneled up to said murderer. Charge the bookmaker, but charge him separately.

The RICO act lets them ruin the lives of guys on the bottom of the Totem Pole. In the case of bookmakers and gamblers, it's often guilt by association at best. Grey area. Different degrees of "badness." A bookmaker being forced to kick up $800 a month to a guy with a few murders under his belt doesn't make that bookmaker as bad a guy as the murderer himself. Although the Government and some moralists obviously feel different about it. But this is America. They're entitled to that opinion.