Really interesting article about RICO

An Offer You Can’t Refuse? | How a Mob Statute Metastasized
PIPER FRENCH

For Shani Robinson, an activist and former educator in Atlanta, the ongoing racketeering trial against the rapper Young Thug and his record label YSL has occasioned a strong sense of déjà vu. Robinson has been ensnared in her own RICO — Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations — case for a decade now. Along the way, she has become a reluctant expert on the statute, but back when she was first charged in 2013, she remembers marveling: What, like Sons of Anarchy? “That was the only thing I knew about RICO,” she told me. “I was thinking, I know they don’t think I was part of some cartel.”

You could be forgiven for wondering what exactly Robinson, an idealistic first-grade teacher who had been at the job just three years when she was indicted for allegedly changing answers on standardized tests, has in common with Young Thug, a famous rapper and fashion maven who stands accused of participating in a criminal street gang. A comparison of the two indictments yields few answers. The alleged conspiracies: the Atlanta public school system is, well, a school system, but Fulton County prosecutors painted it as a criminal enterprise involved in the systematic manipulation of students’ test scores in order to garner bonuses from the state; YSL is a rap label, but prosecutors say it is also a gang involved in drug distribution, theft, and occasionally murder. The leaders: Superintendent Beverly Hall, alleged orchestrator of the cheating scheme, who created “unreasonable pressure” to hit testing targets that caused her employees to resort to fixing exams; Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, who cofounded YSL and elevated its profile through his music. The charges: Robinson was accused of violating Georgia’s RICO Act, while Young Thug is merely charged with conspiracy to violate it; each possesses one count on top of that. Most striking, however, is what they have not been charged with: the indictments associate Robinson and Young Thug with a laundry list of other crimes allegedly committed by their respective “organizations,” of which neither has been directly accused. By the logic of the teacher case, “anyone who receives a paycheck from Atlanta public schools can be classified as a racketeer,” Robinson said. “A lot of people don’t realize how easily anyone could have been involved in this.”

RICO seems to be everywhere in the news lately, and if you are a fan of rap, HBO, or the films of Martin Scorsese, you’ll likely notice it everywhere in pop culture, too. Most people associate RICO with the Mob, for good reason: the statute is best known as the silver bullet that finally took down the New York Cosa Nostra in the 1980s, allowing federal prosecutors to connect crimes committed by its low-level henchmen to its uppermost echelon. And though the law’s exact scope and intent has always been contested, RICO’s principal author, the legal scholar G. Robert Blakey, maintains that it wasn’t crafted purely to target the Mafia, but rather a wide array of crimes that would otherwise slip beyond the reach of the state. In the half century since RICO became law, that aim has been realized beyond his wildest dreams.

Besides the aforementioned targets, the statute has been applied variously to labor unions, tobacco companies, MS-13, abortion protestors, the Hells Angels, corrupt politicians, white-collar criminals, R. Kelly, FIFA, NXIVM, and Major League Baseball. Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, who led the case against the Atlanta teachers and is currently prosecuting YSL, may be RICO’s number-one fan; in March, CNN reported that she was considering using the the statute against Donald Trump. As of this writing, there are whisperings that RICO may be deployed against the protesters opposing a police training facility known as Cop City in Atlanta as well.

It is hard to imagine that Blakey intended his act to apply to someone like Shani Robinson. He’s 88 years old now; when I emailed him, he responded from a smartphone inviting me to send a list of questions, then never replied, so we can’t know for sure. But many of his thoughts are a matter of public record. Blakey has said that he designed RICO as a score settler, “the slingshot the Davids of this world can use to have a fair fight with the Goliaths.” To him, the Cosa Nostra, which was siphoning money and resources off from practically every industry in New York City and could neutralize powerful enemies without repercussion, looked an awful lot like a Goliath. But because the legal system was so exclusively focused on individuals, whenever mobsters did get their day in court it was always the little guys, the ones who actually did the dirty work, who ended up taking the fall. The people with real power could afford to keep their hands clean. And Blakey wanted RICO to be marshaled against corporate bigwigs, too. “We don’t want one set of rules for people whose collars are blue or whose names end in vowels, and another set for those whose collars are white and have Ivy League diplomas,” he told Time in 1989.

In reality, RICO has for the most part exacerbated these imbalances, rather than rectifying them — more atom bomb than silver bullet. Its passage into law in 1970, just as Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on crime” gave way to Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs,” coincided with the start of a vast evolution in the criminal legal system. Over the past 50 years, that system has grown far more sophisticated, interconnected, and well-resourced. It reaches farther into people’s lives than ever before: not just within the thousands of prisons and jails and detention centers that span the country, but in predictive policing technology, court-ordered electronic supervision, social-media surveillance, and increasingly complex charges and cases. RICO has been both a metaphor for that transformation and an engine of it.



Like that of many well-educated strivers of his time, Blakey’s involvement in the major flashpoints of latter twentieth-century American history can appear almost Gumpian. He cut his teeth in Robert F. Kennedy’s Department of Justice and later served on the House assassinations committee that retrod the Warren Commission’s steps, eventually writing two books arguing that JFK was killed by the Mob.

You can read the rest of the article here:

https://www.thedriftmag.com/an-offer-you-cant-refuse/

Thanks for the article.

One question...i know that RICO law defines specific crimes but I wonder if one can be prosecuted just for being a member of the Mafia, without doing any crime? I think in Italy they have that type of law...

Yes, a Mafioso can be prosecuted under RICO if the prosecution makes a case that his specifc crime or crimes were committed on behalf of a "Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization"--i.e., a Mafia family--and followed a "pattrern" of racketeering, like loan-sharking and gambling games. The Justice Dept. defines it this way: "The power of RICO lies in its conspiracy provision, based on an enterprise rationale, that allows tying together apparently unrelated crimes with a common objective into a prosecutable pattern of racketeering."

"Conspiracy" is extremely important because because it greatly eases the prosecution's ability to bring in a conviction vs. a standard felony charge. Two ways:
--They don't have to prove that you actually committed a crime, only that you were conspiring with others to commit a crime.
--The judge willl allow "uncorroborated testimony from unindicted co-conspirators." That's a fancy way of saying that if you are their prime target, and they think I was involved in some way with you, they can pull me in, threaten to indict me for the same crime, and then withhold indicting me if I agree to cooperate with them. In orher words, they can coerce me into testifying against you. And when I do, they won't have to produce corroborating witnesses who will back up my testimony against you.

Thanks for the explanation TB. Cheers

In Italy, under article 41bis, you can be charged just for mafia association, even without committing crime.

100% right

Carm!!!! Darling, nice to see you again after all these years! I/we missed you and your info and I hope this time you'll stick around. Cheers

Good to see you again Carmela!

Thanks, and thank you, TooDoped. I had gotten an email notification for a PM, so I logged in. Then I saw this post, which caught my interest.

Despite what others had said years ago, my husband, today, is facing 11 counts of state RICO charges. People thought I was storytelling back then when this all started.

Anyway, good to see you still around, both of you.

Thanks Carm and yeah I know what you're saying since most of those guys are assholes and I literally banned myself from that place aka kamikaze style lol, so fuck em. Sorry to hear about your husband, since I remember back in the days you already told me some stuff. Dont forget that some of us are still here for you and again, Im glad to see you're ok after all this time. Salut'

Years ago during Deer Season, I would get Charlie Murgie a Sunday Pittsburgh Post. After he read the article regarding the new RICO Law, he told the rest of the Guys that we better get different jobs as this new law will put us out of business.

Welcome back Carmela!!! I'm glad that turn back to the forum.Sorry for your husband,he get a long sentence?

Hi Furio, and thanks! I just really saw this topic that caught my attention when I logged in to read a PM, that's all. Not really back to the forum.

Trial is set for January 8. This has been going on forever. Started out as a civil case back in 2014, and was settled. Reopened in 2018 as a criminal case. Then prosecutor went back to the grand jury for a superceeding indictment and got them turned over to (11) RICO charges (state). Covid slowed things down in the courts, too. If you're asking what the max sentence would be for convictions on all 11 charges? Something ridiculous like 113 years lol.

Biggest issue here is my husband never became a US citizen, only legal resident with a green card, so he faces deportation if convicted. Any sentence that's over one year is grounds for deportation under RICO.

I guess kamikaze is the way to go

+1

Good to see old posters again!!!!

Thats a great statement, meaning we should all get back together on this forum like in the old days.

Yeah, well, the old days weren't all that great. The new days aren't so hot either right now, though.

I agree Carm and I get what you're saying. Everything is about competition and backstabbing, while being on a ordinary mafia forum lol but still (dont get me wrong) i think there was more respect between members 10 or 12 years ago, than today. If you are gone for few months, all of the people that you personally brought on these forums are going to steal your stuff and will be against you. But as the song goes...Thats Life

Oh yeah, the forums you mean. I meant my own personal life as of now. It's been tough and I have a lot on my plate. Well, my husband, kids, and myself. It hasn't been easy and not going to be.

As far as the boards go, it was fun. You know these guys love to spread a good story, even made up and fabricated ones.
My days posting have been over obviously as of 2015, or so, a result of what's going on here. Again, I know they thought I was story telling, it didn't matter. All anyone had to do was ask, and I could show you what 11 RICO charges look like and whatever else they wanted to see for proof.

Stay well TooDoped, Jimmy Two Times, Furio, and others. And good luck to you and NYMafia on your endeavors.

Thank you Carmela. That was a classy thing to say. We're not familiar with one another, but I definitely appreciate your outlook and kind words. And you seem like a class act.

And I obviously don't know what's going on with you and your family in your personal life. But whatever hardships your facing, I certainly hope they'll be in the rearview mirror for you soon.

Best of luck and good wishes

+100

Thanks Carmela.

Fur you are also one of the original members around here and so thanks for all of your info from the past and in future, obviously in advance

Thanks TooDoped.