RICO is routinely used to try to prove that a legal business was being used for illegal means ( RICO was used to prosecute drug traffickers or organized crime members).
In recent years prosecutors have applied RICO to crooked government officials: (1) those accused of using their public offices for personal gain, and, (2) tax-paid officials of govt agencies using public monies to flout the law.
To bring a case under RICO laws, there must be (A) at least two underlying felonies such as fraud, bribery, witness tampering (among other felonies) and (B) a known pattern of repeated crimes.
RICO allows prosecutors to include multiple defendants charged with various crimes in the blanket indictment, and to charge that govt employees, publicly-funded and publicly-sanctioned entities were allegedly part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
JUST ONE EXAMPLE A govt official commits two felonies by (1) accepting, and, (2) filing falsified documents.
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TAX-PAYING AMERICANS BEING BILKED BY PUBLIC CORRUPTION,
BY CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES OF INDIVIDUALS ON THE PUBLIC PAYROLL
NEED TO GO THIS ROUTE Strengthen and enact state RICO laws to nail greedy criminal govt officials.
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AND THIS If proof is established that public corruption impaired the commercial and economic activity of the region, that could be prosecutable under the Hobbs Act. (18 U.S.C. § 1951) which prohibits actual or attempted robbery or extortion affecting interstate or foreign commerce.
Section 1951 also proscribes conspiracy to commit robbery or extortion without reference to the conspiracy statute at 18 U.S.C. § 371.
Although the Hobbs Act was enacted as a statute to combat racketeering in labor-management disputes, the statute is frequently used in connection with cases involving public corruption, commercial disputes, violent criminals and street gangs, and corruption directed at members of labor unions.
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CASE IN POINT The 1980 Georgia General Assembly was concerned about the increasing sophistication of various criminal elements on the public payroll (and those in elective and appointive office). The Georgia General Assembly then adopted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), patterned after a similar federal law.
UPDATE Georgia tried convicted and jailed 27 corrupt teachers under this law.....for falsely taking public money, falsifying official school records, and so on.
And who exactly would prosecute these traitors? Is there an honest prosecutor ANYWHERE in the just-us system?
The media willingly participated in the crimes, putting out false information (and they knew what they were getting) fed to them by corrupt gubmint officials. As such, they lose their press protections. They are part of the “organized crime”.