Word: racket
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ring had been harvesting kidneys from poor Indian laborers, sometimes against their wishes, and using them in foreigners desperate for transplants. Police who busted the ring last week say doctors paid as little as $1000 for the kidneys and then sold them for as much as $37,500. The racket, based in Gurgaon, a business center close to the capital, New Delhi, drew victims from as many as eight Indian states and lasted for almost a decade. Police say the black market doctors may have illegally transplanted as many as 500 kidneys. The ring, according to the police...
Could the sport do with another John McEnroe, do you think? Well, personalities are good. The crowds can decide in their own minds whether they like him or hate him. Getting angry... I'm okay with it. Get angry, throw your racket - shows you care. I like John. John's a nice individual. He was a competitor. We talked about artistry. Well, his racket control was superb. He was just a natural. You can't teach people that kind of racket work...
...solution--or at least a PowerPoint presentation--and then leaping onto their horses and galloping away. Who was that masked man? At their best, consultants see a situation with fresh eyes and bring some useful analytical tools. At their worst, they are a prestige play verging on a protection racket. Hey, Mr. CEO: Every other big company has hired McKinsey. What's your problem...
...Sicilian Mafia, founded in the mid-19th century as a protection racket in Palermo, is the master template of the modern organized-crime network. Yet its success is grounded in paradox. Cosa Nostra is a multinational conglomerate based in the backwater of Sicily, an organization bred in violence that accumulates power best when it maintains internal peace. It is an association of men - sometimes men of extraordinary influence and charisma - yet the Thing is always bigger than even its most powerful bosses...
Beyond the art thieves linked to established organized crime networks, Rutelli also said there is evidence that terrorists were getting rich off the racket. "There are conversations in which [Sep. 11 suicide bomber] Mohammed Atta was talking about some of the financing of terrorism... coming from the illicit art trafficking market," he said. But Rutelli said there is also a "scientific" motivation for his unprecedented push to resolve these standoffs directly with the musuems. "The issue is also one of context. If you have a stolen masterpiece, you don't know its history. You don't know where it comes...