Cook reported that the 1980 Georgia General Assembly was concerned about the increasing sophistication of various criminal elements on the public payroll. The Assembly then adopted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), patterned after a similar federal law.
(RICO is often used to try to prove that a legal business was being used for illegal means, and, in at its inception, RICO was used to prosecute drug traffickers or organized crime members).
In recent years prosecutors have applied RICO to government officials accused of using their offices for personal gain---he activites of former and current Atlanta public school officials.
To bring a case under Georgias RICO law, there must be at least two underlying felonies such as fraud, bribery, witness tampering (among other felonies).
RICO allows prosecutors to include multiple defendants charged with various crimes in the blanket indictment, and to charge that govt employees, publicy-funded and publicly-traded entities were allegedly part of an ongoing criminal enterprise...
......such as local govt welfare offices accepting falsified documents, state and/or county public assistance programs, state education funding agencies expending tax funds illegally, voter registration agencies accepting falsified documents, lending/banking/credit card companies, and the like.
good information, thank you.