Word: crimeeds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...studio apartment in Boston's North End was an unlikely headquarters for a multimillion-dollar business. No grand entrance, no smiling receptionist. But it was in that nondescript room that leaders of the Angiulo crime family, the city's predominant underworld dynasty, met regularly to plan the fortunes of an evil empire fed by murder, gambling and loan sharking. Often their plotting turned to what they considered a vexing subject: how to avoid the reach of a unique federal law called RICO, which not only targets Mob leaders but can also dismantle their whole illegal enterprise. "Remember that word 'enterprise...
...These provisions allow authorities to confiscate the semilegitimate business fronts, the corrupt construction companies and the phony finance operations through which much Mob wealth is funneled. In the past, even when an underworld chief was imprisoned, the illicit operations remained intact. With RICO, prosecutors can go after the crime empires themselves. In the Angiulo case, for example, the feds are pursuing $4 million in Mob assets, including two apartment buildings, a restaurant and some prime real estate near the Boston Garden...
RICO has been used to imprison the chief mobsters of Los Angeles, Cleveland and New Orleans and to charge leaders of major crime families in New York City. Add to that toll the Angiulos, whose fretting about RICO was recorded in 1981, along with a lot more incriminating material. Last week, after an eight- month trial, the four brothers and an associate were sentenced to varying prison terms and fines, with Gennaro Angiulo drawing 45 years and $120,000. Using the umbrella RICO statute rather than just a series of specific offenses, said Prosecutor Jeremiah O'Sullivan, meant the jury...
Just how large the criminal business is that RICO must combat was redramatized last week by the President's Commission on Organized Crime. Wrapping up 2 1/2 years of work, the 18-member commission released a somber report warning that organized criminals have made inroads into virtually every major U.S. industry. They drain the nation's economy through tax evasion and the higher prices caused by their involvement in legitimate business, the commission concluded. The impact could be an extra .3% in consumer prices this year. Altogether, organized crime may take in as much as $106 billion...
Recognizing the breadth of organized crime activity, drafters of RICO in 1970 sought to create matching law-enforcement breadth by focusing on patterns rather than instances of criminal behavior. Thus the law applies to those involved in an interstate "enterprise" that engages more than once in ten years in criminal activities ranging from mail, wire and stock fraud to extortion and murder. While many smiled over the acronym's reference to Rico, the archetypal gangster played by Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, federal prosecutors were slow to use the new legislation. But "since 1980 it's been used aggressively...