'Fear City: New York vs The Mafia': RICO Act helped feds gather incriminating evidence against crime syndicates
In the 1970s, New York was under the control of the Italian-American Mafia who ruled the city with an iron fist. Their influence was widespread, and so was the fear they generated among the public with their illicit operations. Federal law enforcement ultimately took down the mob during the 1986 Mafia Commission Trials, but it wasn't an easy battle. Netflix's new true-crime documentary 'Fear City: New York vs The Mafia', sheds light on the Five Families of New York and events leading up to the trials, comprising first-hand accounts from former FBI agents and mobsters.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had been overwhelmed with criminal case files related to the mafia and had been trying to take them down for years. Yet, they would some up shorthanded every time. Initially, they had jumped in head-first into investigating the La Cosa Nostra, or the Five Families, without a set plan. They had no strategy, although they had been doing their research about the structure of the Mafia and the way they operated, they hadn't known how to proceed. They had one of the government's most efficient tools at their disposal to fight against organized crime, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970.
While it isn't a mob informant, it is a federal statute and was specifically passed to help defeat the Mafia as well as other white-collar crime. The law helps prosecutors and law enforcement go after an entire organized-crime syndicate. 'Racketeering' is based on the word for Mafia schemes, 'rackets'. It is making money through an unlawful enterprise that shows patterns of illegal money-making activities and transactions. Essentially, the law allows for the prosecution of crimes performed as a part of the criminal organization which closed a loophole that allowed mobsters at higher ranks to evade charges. Since its enactment, it has been extensively and successfully to prosecute thousands of individuals and organizations in the US.
In this context, almost any felony falls under racketeering. For a conviction to occur, at least two or more crimes must have been committed within a 15-year period. If multiple crimes have been committed in pursuit of a common scheme, then the individual gets a longer prison sentence. The crimes include bribery, illegal gambling, kidnapping, money laundering, counterfeiting, embezzlement, drug trafficking, slavery, murder, and extortion. The Act also states that members of the criminal enterprise can be prosecuted for racketeering even if they themselves weren't involved in individual crimes, which completely eliminated a common defense tactic that mafia dons used. Before the implementation of the law, low-level criminals that actually committed the crime under the boss' command would be prosecuted, which was an easy escape route for the dons
In 'Fear City: New York vs The Mafia' the turning point of the investigation was when Feds were sent to Cornell University in 1980, to pursue a crash course in the then clandestine RICO Act. The FBI agents hadn't grasped the meaning of the law well enough to use it in their investigation. Under law professor, G Robert Blakey, who had helped draft the law, the Feds learned everything there was to the law and within a week's time, left the classroom with a new weapon in hand. In the current scenario, RICO is being used mostly by civil attorneys to get large lawsuit awards from corporations and other groups. It is being used less frequently for cases against organized crime.
‘Fear City: New York vs The Mafia’ is now streaming on Netflix.