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Short Stuff: RICO Act · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's lurking in the background, sitting in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: for guest producer, but real producer, Dave. And this is
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: short stuff guests but real Yeah, not like you blow
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: up doll guest producers. Now they're well, they're real in
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: a I guess a material wave, that's it. Yeah, something
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: sometimes emotional. I guess you could get wrapped up in
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I suppose I've seen Lars and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the real girl. You dressed up as that for Halloween? Yes, yeah,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that was pretty pretty good. That was all you mean.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: She came up with that one. That was good, very nice.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: And I love a good obscure Halloween costume. Yes, so,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: speaking of obscure Halloween costumes, Chuck, you could do worse
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: than dressing up as John Gotti the Teflon don, couldn't
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: you have? You got the hair for it, you, Yeah,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: that's the main thing. You gotta have the hair. But
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: you also have to have the attitude, you know, Yeah,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: like I can do whatever I want and nothing sticks. Yeah,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that's close. That's pretty close. I was to get more,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: just like, you know, almost unprovoked violence to to the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: to the end of as a means to the end
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of gaining money and power. Yeah, I mean that's our generations,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: like real life Vito Corleone type stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: was like kind of, as far as I can tell,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: like the last of the real mob bosses exactly. He
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: went down. Man, we're gonna get like a letter from
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the Italian American Anti Defamation. Yeah, they're gonna say, dear
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck Gobbagon isn't a thing, right, So yeah, I mean
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: he he went down in and I would say that
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: golden Age, the heyday of mafios in the United States
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: was in the sixties. But the way he went down
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: was thanks to uh a law that got asked about
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: twenty years prior to him going down, called the Rico Act,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: which is one of those things that like everybody has
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: heard of, but it doesn't necessarily know exactly how it works,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And that's what we're here
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to explain how the Rico Act works. Yeah, it's I mean,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the Rico Act is something that if you are in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: our generation or even a little younger, and you've watched
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: any sopranos or any sort of modern day Mafia movie.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: You're gonna hear RICO thrown around a lot, because that
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: is the kind of the only thing that they found
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: that has teeth with these cases. It stands for the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, And you know, it's
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: you know, a racket is like you hear in those
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: movies on the street, like you got a numbers racket
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: or protection racket. And I just think it's kind of
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: funny that racketeering became the official word, you know, I know.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And it's also it made the whole thing way more
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: muddy than it has to be, I think, you know
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: what I mean, Yeah, racket and racketeering. If they just
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: call it like the Organized Crime Act, it would be
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: a perfect umbrella that would be far more understandable because
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of people do think of rackets as like
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: a numbers racket or a prostitution ring or something like Underworld,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And RICO has been extended
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: successfully to boardrooms and um, you know, to white collar
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: crime as well, and all of that would be considered
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: organized crime. That's the point. It's some people working carrying
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: out business and the business is illegal. Um, it's using
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: illegal activities to gain revenue, to gain income. That's a racket,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't just have to be something like shady
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and underworld like a numbers racket, right, And racketeering specifically
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: is anytime a person is is managing a situation or
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: an enterprise or a company or a corporation or a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: crime family where there is a pattern of activities like
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: this going on. And people like John Gotti and so
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: many before him, you know, they called him teflon Don
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: for a reason because nothing would stick like they would
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: just they weren't the trigger people. They weren't the person,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you know, stabbing someone in a trunk in a hayfield,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Joe Pecci style man that was violent, or carrying out
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the numbers game or having the meeting about the protection.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they were so high level that they didn't actually
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: commit technically any of these crimes personally. No. So they
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: could get the guy who was stabbing the guy in
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the trunk in the hay field, they could get him
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: for murder, no problem, you know what I mean, But
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: they couldn't get the person who was genuinely at its
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: core responsible for that murder, the person who was organizing
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: this enterprise or managing the enterprise. And that's what the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Recoact is all about, is creating a law that the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: FEDS used to go after the c suite level people
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: in organized crime, whether it's a legitimate business where like
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: though it's white collar crime, or whether it's organized crime
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: family like a carteller, cind kidder, mafia, mafia. Boy. That
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that stuff was just rolling off your tongue until the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: very end, until the end I clarked it up. That's
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the that's the rarely used second definition of Clark, where
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: you just completely screw something beautiful up at the end.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: It's not like a great thing where you give someone
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: a candy bar, right, Clark bar. If you clarksonone at
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Clark Bar, I think the universe would fold in on it.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: All right. I think we should take a break and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about what the RICO
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Act and what it isn't right after this. That's why
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: s game a little bit that you should know, why
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: game should knows but Clark alright, so we're back. The
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: first thing about the R I c O Rico Act
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: is that we should say is that I think a
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: lot of people are under the impression that they built
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: out the RICO Act to make it super easy just
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: to go after like a crime boss. And all you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: have to do is basically say, you know, it's the
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: reco Act in your racketeering. It's um. It is broad
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: language wise, but the Supreme Court and appeals courts have
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: all come together to sort of nine, Yeah, they did.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: They sort of narrowed down that language to make it, um,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: not tougher, but just a little more specific. Yeah, but
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I think in doing so they definitely did make it tougher. UM.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And the Feds apparently use a racketeering charge or they
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: use the reco act when there's when there's nothing else,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Like if they have somebody caught red handed, you know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: directly ordering a murder or committing the murder or delivering
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: you know, fifty keys of cocaine or something, there's a
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: lot they got that person on that on that broken
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: law like that crime. Uh, they don't need anything else.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: The RICO they go to when there's nothing else, but
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: they have some sort of evidence that that person is directing,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: calling the shots of this business where those kind of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: activities are being carried out. Right, And it's really sort
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: of a two part um proving process. You have to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: prove that there is a pattern of this stuff going on,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't just like I think if it's just
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: like one murder and and it's not a racketeering thing,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: that's just hiring somebody or directing someone to carry out
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a murder. But you have to prove that it's a
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: pattern of criminal activity within an organization. And then you
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: need to prove, like really really prove that Gotti or
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: whoever it is, is the person who was managing that stuff,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: who was making those calls and directing that operation. Yeah,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: you you have to like really really prove you can't
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: just be in corpy, like, come on, it's Sjohn got
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: come on that. She couldn't be more shiny, right, So yeah,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: you gotta prove that. But if you got those two parts,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and that's how they got Gotti. They they had one
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: of his underbosses, Samy the Bull, Gravano turned states on him,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: um and uh, he informed on him. He said, yeah,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I killed a lot of people under John Gotti's direction.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: And they also had a wire tap. I don't know
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: if it was from Gravano or not, but they had
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: wire taps of of Gotti like issuing orders to other people.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: So they're like, this guy's testimony plus this recording of God,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: he shows that he is the boss of this criminal enterprise.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Hence they got him on a racketeering charge and he
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: died in prison. And I saw, also Chuck that the
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: other families in New York didn't send any representatives to
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: his funeral, which was surprising to me, like out of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: respect or whatever. Yeah, I guess out of disrespect, they
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: didn't send anybody. Yeah. This this is the part that's
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: kind of funny to me because it's kind of a
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: catch twenty two because I feel like, if you're at
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: least in the movies, ah, Like, it seems like these
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: people want it's for everyone to know who's in charge.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And then what they get them on is the fact
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: that they're in charge, which is what they deny in court,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: like I'm not in charge of anything, Like well, wait
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: a minute, I thought you were in charge of everything, right, right? Yeah,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Well they they some of them have very famously like
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: played you know, kind of like doddering out of their minds.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Elderly men like who couldn't possibly, you know, tie their
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: own shoe, let alone run a crime family. And they'll
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: like play this in court even it's really something to see,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: um so rico cases for a little while and you
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: can still have a civil lawsuit. But they for a
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: while they were um ordering triple damages if you were
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: injured by a rico violation and so in the eighties,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: obviously this is going to lead to just a ground
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: swell of attorneys coming after people trying to get that
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that triple money. And so they had to tighten that
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: down a little bit. I think they put in a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: four year uh statute of limitations and um even the
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church. They came after the Catholic Church with a
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: recoaed civil suit. Yeah, they did. They said that the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: all the way up to the pope. I think the
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: pope was implicated in the civil suit that they was
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: an organized criminal enterprise to obstruct justice and to keep
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: um to avoid prosecution basically of of priests and others
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: who had like sexually abused parishioners, which is I mean,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know how that one ever ended up. I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's still ongoing, do you. I'm not
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: sure about that. Actually, we'll have to look that one up.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: But that was that that's if it's not ongoing. It
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: was fairly recent. There's some other recent ones too, UM
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: that are far more recent than Gaudi UM that have
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with the mob, like here in Atlanta,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the Atlanta UM School's cheating scandal of two thousand fifteen.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: The people who organized that were indicted on racketeering charges
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and some of them got like twenty years in prison
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: for inances. Yeah. That was basically when they were saying, hey,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: we can get more federal government juice if we had
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: better standardized test scorer, So why don't you go in
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: there and fledge these numbers a little bit? Yeah, and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and even worse than that, when people said no, they
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: would get fired, they would be uh, they would get
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: like bad write ups and reviews, and they would miss
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: out on like promotions and raises because it was the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: people at the very top were organizing this cheating scandal
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: scandal UM and so like they were there was like
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: it was a criminal enterprise. Basically they were trying to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: build the federal government out of money. I guess it's
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: what they went after, mind. But they got a bunch
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: of people and apparently it's one of the biggest um
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: criminal enterprises ever ever prosecuted. Right here, and that I mean,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that just gets across like it doesn't have to be
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: a mob Boston. The white collar public school teachers obviously
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: not to be trusted. Um no, no, no, that's what
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the RICO Act has taught us. No, we're not saying
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that people, so uh, you got anything else? I got
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: nothing else I got My hands are clean and I
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything. You can't prove nothing, copper. And since
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: we said that, everybody short stuffing out stuff you should know.
• 12:14
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• 12:17
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