WEBVTT - Short Stuff: RICO Act 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:06.680 Hey, you welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:09.360 there's Chuck and Jerry's lurking in the background, sitting in 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.239 for guest producer, but real producer, Dave. And this is 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:17.360 short stuff guests but real Yeah, not like you blow 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:21.119 up doll guest producers. Now they're well, they're real in 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.520 a I guess a material wave, that's it. Yeah, something 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.840 sometimes emotional. I guess you could get wrapped up in 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:31.800 that kind of thing. I suppose I've seen Lars and 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:36.120 the real girl. You dressed up as that for Halloween? Yes, yeah, 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.919 that was pretty pretty good. That was all you mean. 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.120 She came up with that one. That was good, very nice. 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:47.279 And I love a good obscure Halloween costume. Yes, so, 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:51.640 speaking of obscure Halloween costumes, Chuck, you could do worse 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.720 than dressing up as John Gotti the Teflon don, couldn't 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.680 you have? You got the hair for it, you, Yeah, 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:01.360 that's the main thing. You gotta have the hair. But 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:03.760 you also have to have the attitude, you know, Yeah, 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:07.000 like I can do whatever I want and nothing sticks. Yeah, 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.520 that's close. That's pretty close. I was to get more, 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:15.680 just like, you know, almost unprovoked violence to to the 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:18.400 to the end of as a means to the end 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:22.319 of gaining money and power. Yeah, I mean that's our generations, 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:27.840 like real life Vito Corleone type stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:29.680 was like kind of, as far as I can tell, 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:35.759 like the last of the real mob bosses exactly. He 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.560 went down. Man, we're gonna get like a letter from 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.280 the Italian American Anti Defamation. Yeah, they're gonna say, dear 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:46.640 Chuck Gobbagon isn't a thing, right, So yeah, I mean 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:50.080 he he went down in and I would say that 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.960 golden Age, the heyday of mafios in the United States 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.720 was in the sixties. But the way he went down 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.639 was thanks to uh a law that got asked about 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.360 twenty years prior to him going down, called the Rico Act, 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:06.760 which is one of those things that like everybody has 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.680 heard of, but it doesn't necessarily know exactly how it works, 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:12.240 you know what I mean. And that's what we're here 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.000 to explain how the Rico Act works. Yeah, it's I mean, 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.040 the Rico Act is something that if you are in 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:21.720 our generation or even a little younger, and you've watched 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.840 any sopranos or any sort of modern day Mafia movie. 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:28.880 You're gonna hear RICO thrown around a lot, because that 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.200 is the kind of the only thing that they found 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:34.000 that has teeth with these cases. It stands for the 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:39.680 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, And you know, it's 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.440 you know, a racket is like you hear in those 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.520 movies on the street, like you got a numbers racket 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.560 or protection racket. And I just think it's kind of 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.960 funny that racketeering became the official word, you know, I know. 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.799 And it's also it made the whole thing way more 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:57.799 muddy than it has to be, I think, you know 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:01.680 what I mean, Yeah, racket and racketeering. If they just 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:03.679 call it like the Organized Crime Act, it would be 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.080 a perfect umbrella that would be far more understandable because 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:08.960 a lot of people do think of rackets as like 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.800 a numbers racket or a prostitution ring or something like Underworld, 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:15.360 you know what I mean. And RICO has been extended 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.440 successfully to boardrooms and um, you know, to white collar 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:21.920 crime as well, and all of that would be considered 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:26.560 organized crime. That's the point. It's some people working carrying 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.360 out business and the business is illegal. Um, it's using 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.400 illegal activities to gain revenue, to gain income. That's a racket, 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.120 and it doesn't just have to be something like shady 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:41.720 and underworld like a numbers racket, right, And racketeering specifically 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:48.040 is anytime a person is is managing a situation or 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.360 an enterprise or a company or a corporation or a 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:55.320 crime family where there is a pattern of activities like 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:59.320 this going on. And people like John Gotti and so 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.280 many before him, you know, they called him teflon Don 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:04.440 for a reason because nothing would stick like they would 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.840 just they weren't the trigger people. They weren't the person, 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.960 you know, stabbing someone in a trunk in a hayfield, 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.479 Joe Pecci style man that was violent, or carrying out 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.560 the numbers game or having the meeting about the protection. 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.799 Sometimes they were so high level that they didn't actually 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:28.640 commit technically any of these crimes personally. No. So they 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:30.680 could get the guy who was stabbing the guy in 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:32.520 the trunk in the hay field, they could get him 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:34.640 for murder, no problem, you know what I mean, But 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.360 they couldn't get the person who was genuinely at its 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.280 core responsible for that murder, the person who was organizing 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.440 this enterprise or managing the enterprise. And that's what the 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:48.120 Recoact is all about, is creating a law that the 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.400 FEDS used to go after the c suite level people 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.720 in organized crime, whether it's a legitimate business where like 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.479 though it's white collar crime, or whether it's organized crime 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:04.039 family like a carteller, cind kidder, mafia, mafia. Boy. That 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:05.960 that stuff was just rolling off your tongue until the 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:09.720 very end, until the end I clarked it up. That's 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.640 the that's the rarely used second definition of Clark, where 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.680 you just completely screw something beautiful up at the end. 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:18.640 It's not like a great thing where you give someone 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:22.080 a candy bar, right, Clark bar. If you clarksonone at 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.200 Clark Bar, I think the universe would fold in on it. 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:26.279 All right. I think we should take a break and 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:28.480 we'll talk a little bit more about what the RICO 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.280 Act and what it isn't right after this. That's why 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:36.400 s game a little bit that you should know, why 0:05:36.760 --> 0:06:00.120 game should knows but Clark alright, so we're back. The 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.640 first thing about the R I c O Rico Act 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:06.440 is that we should say is that I think a 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.080 lot of people are under the impression that they built 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.840 out the RICO Act to make it super easy just 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.360 to go after like a crime boss. And all you 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.560 have to do is basically say, you know, it's the 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.040 reco Act in your racketeering. It's um. It is broad 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.560 language wise, but the Supreme Court and appeals courts have 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.240 all come together to sort of nine, Yeah, they did. 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.200 They sort of narrowed down that language to make it, um, 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.840 not tougher, but just a little more specific. Yeah, but 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.520 I think in doing so they definitely did make it tougher. UM. 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.560 And the Feds apparently use a racketeering charge or they 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.840 use the reco act when there's when there's nothing else, 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.800 Like if they have somebody caught red handed, you know, 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:53.920 directly ordering a murder or committing the murder or delivering 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.800 you know, fifty keys of cocaine or something, there's a 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:02.800 lot they got that person on that on that broken 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.960 law like that crime. Uh, they don't need anything else. 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:09.320 The RICO they go to when there's nothing else, but 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.320 they have some sort of evidence that that person is directing, 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.440 calling the shots of this business where those kind of 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:19.080 activities are being carried out. Right, And it's really sort 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.640 of a two part um proving process. You have to 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.720 prove that there is a pattern of this stuff going on, 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.640 and it wasn't just like I think if it's just 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.080 like one murder and and it's not a racketeering thing, 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.720 that's just hiring somebody or directing someone to carry out 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.040 a murder. But you have to prove that it's a 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:42.080 pattern of criminal activity within an organization. And then you 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:45.920 need to prove, like really really prove that Gotti or 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.920 whoever it is, is the person who was managing that stuff, 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.200 who was making those calls and directing that operation. Yeah, 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:56.240 you you have to like really really prove you can't 0:07:56.280 --> 0:08:01.560 just be in corpy, like, come on, it's Sjohn got 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:07.280 come on that. She couldn't be more shiny, right, So yeah, 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.360 you gotta prove that. But if you got those two parts, 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.320 and that's how they got Gotti. They they had one 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:16.320 of his underbosses, Samy the Bull, Gravano turned states on him, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.840 um and uh, he informed on him. He said, yeah, 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.480 I killed a lot of people under John Gotti's direction. 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.120 And they also had a wire tap. I don't know 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:28.080 if it was from Gravano or not, but they had 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:31.440 wire taps of of Gotti like issuing orders to other people. 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.920 So they're like, this guy's testimony plus this recording of God, 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.640 he shows that he is the boss of this criminal enterprise. 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.079 Hence they got him on a racketeering charge and he 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.839 died in prison. And I saw, also Chuck that the 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.880 other families in New York didn't send any representatives to 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:49.880 his funeral, which was surprising to me, like out of 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.840 respect or whatever. Yeah, I guess out of disrespect, they 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.600 didn't send anybody. Yeah. This this is the part that's 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:57.040 kind of funny to me because it's kind of a 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.760 catch twenty two because I feel like, if you're at 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:02.480 least in the movies, ah, Like, it seems like these 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.120 people want it's for everyone to know who's in charge. 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:08.360 And then what they get them on is the fact 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:10.800 that they're in charge, which is what they deny in court, 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.880 like I'm not in charge of anything, Like well, wait 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:17.800 a minute, I thought you were in charge of everything, right, right? Yeah, 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:20.719 Well they they some of them have very famously like 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:24.800 played you know, kind of like doddering out of their minds. 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.560 Elderly men like who couldn't possibly, you know, tie their 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.920 own shoe, let alone run a crime family. And they'll 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:35.080 like play this in court even it's really something to see, 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.240 um so rico cases for a little while and you 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.920 can still have a civil lawsuit. But they for a 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.720 while they were um ordering triple damages if you were 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.640 injured by a rico violation and so in the eighties, 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:51.800 obviously this is going to lead to just a ground 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.319 swell of attorneys coming after people trying to get that 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.760 that triple money. And so they had to tighten that 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:00.360 down a little bit. I think they put in a 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.880 four year uh statute of limitations and um even the 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.160 Catholic Church. They came after the Catholic Church with a 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:10.000 recoaed civil suit. Yeah, they did. They said that the 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:11.800 all the way up to the pope. I think the 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.559 pope was implicated in the civil suit that they was 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:21.360 an organized criminal enterprise to obstruct justice and to keep 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.720 um to avoid prosecution basically of of priests and others 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.440 who had like sexually abused parishioners, which is I mean, 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:31.319 I don't know how that one ever ended up. I 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.000 don't know if it's still ongoing, do you. I'm not 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.480 sure about that. Actually, we'll have to look that one up. 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.040 But that was that that's if it's not ongoing. It 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.360 was fairly recent. There's some other recent ones too, UM 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.360 that are far more recent than Gaudi UM that have 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:48.840 nothing to do with the mob, like here in Atlanta, 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.080 the Atlanta UM School's cheating scandal of two thousand fifteen. 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.920 The people who organized that were indicted on racketeering charges 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.200 and some of them got like twenty years in prison 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.880 for inances. Yeah. That was basically when they were saying, hey, 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:05.840 we can get more federal government juice if we had 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:07.839 better standardized test scorer, So why don't you go in 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.679 there and fledge these numbers a little bit? Yeah, and 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.640 and even worse than that, when people said no, they 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.520 would get fired, they would be uh, they would get 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.000 like bad write ups and reviews, and they would miss 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.160 out on like promotions and raises because it was the 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.319 people at the very top were organizing this cheating scandal 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.439 scandal UM and so like they were there was like 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.360 it was a criminal enterprise. Basically they were trying to 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:33.480 build the federal government out of money. I guess it's 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:35.800 what they went after, mind. But they got a bunch 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:38.480 of people and apparently it's one of the biggest um 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:45.320 criminal enterprises ever ever prosecuted. Right here, and that I mean, 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:47.160 that just gets across like it doesn't have to be 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:51.200 a mob Boston. The white collar public school teachers obviously 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.439 not to be trusted. Um no, no, no, that's what 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.000 the RICO Act has taught us. No, we're not saying 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:01.240 that people, so uh, you got anything else? I got 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:03.520 nothing else I got My hands are clean and I 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:08.600 didn't do anything. You can't prove nothing, copper. And since 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:14.719 we said that, everybody short stuffing out stuff you should know. 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:17.600 Is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:21.040 my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.000 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.