October 15, 1970 was one of the most import dates in mob history. But at the time, most mobsters and their defense attorneys didn’t know it.

This was the date RICO or the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was signed into law by then President Richard Nixon.

RICO provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering, and it allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes which they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing, closing a perceived loophole that allowed a person who instructed someone else to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because he did not actually commit the crime personally.

Since the early 1980s RICO has decimated the mob turning thousands of once sworn to secrecy wiseguys into to informant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3x2Uy_iiso