Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steal.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're going to talk about RICO.

That's the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act that was passed in part

to give the government more tools to go after the mafia.

I asked a lot of people who I should speak to about RICO and all the paths led to today's guest, Jim Trustee.

Jim was a prosecutor for 28 years, including seven in the Department of Justice's criminal division,

where he was chief of the organized crime and gang section.

Jim works now at the IFRA law firm, where he's the chairman of the white

collar group and focuses primarily on litigation and resolution of complex matters ranging

from cybersecurity to asset forfeiture. Jim, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me.

Can you give us a bit of background on the RICO Act? What prompted it and why do we need it?

Back in the late 1960s, the United States slowly began to realize there was this thing called

the mafia. It literally took mafia members testifying in front of Congress about La Cosa Nostra,

our thing, and describing it as an organized crime family or a group of families.

So in 1970, Congress enacted a whole bunch of laws through the organized crime auspices of Robert F. Kennedy, who was the Attorney General.

They pushed hard for this legislation that included things like the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt corrupt organizations act, which was the RICO statute.

There were also wiretap laws that were passed, witness protection laws, but the RICO statute became in the late 1970s and into the 80s one of the primary tools to use against the mafia.

We're going to be really focusing on the federal level and the criminal

side, but can you just give us a structural primer? There is a federal and state, RICO provisions,

and criminal and civil. How does that break down? The federal part of the RICO statute is definitely

divided into criminal and civil. The practice tends to be much heavier on the criminal side.

So civilly, private parties can pursue RICO claims against things like, for instance, big tobacco.

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