5 Famous Racketeering Cases

Founded in 1948, the Hells Angels Motorcyle Club was a biker gang with a bad reputation. Although individual members of the Oakland, California-based motorcycle club had been convicted of murder and drug trafficking, the Feds wanted to take down the entire organization.

In 1979, the Department of Justice charged 33 high-ranking Hells Angels with RICO violations, including Sonny Barger, the club’s long-time president. Prosecutors tried to make the case that the Hells Angels was a full-time criminal organization dedicated to manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine. Juries weren’t convinced, though, and two separate RICO cases ended in mistrials when juries failed to reach a verdict.

In the 1980s, New York City was the epicenter of organized crime in America orchestrated by the “Five Families.”

The Mafia Commission Trial of 1985 was an ambitious effort to cut off the head of the New York mafia by locking up the bosses of all five families, labeled the “Commission.” Incredibly, it worked. The prosecution was led by Rudolph Giuliani, then a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Jurors heard incriminating evidence gathered from a five-year investigation into the Five Families, including private conversations caught on tape from hundreds of court-approved wiretaps. In the end, eight mob bosses were convicted of racketeering and seven received 100-year prison sentences.

Michael Milken was once the highest paid man on Wall Street, worth $1.1 billion in the late 1980s. Milken helped create the “junk bond” market—high-risk investments used to raise capital for corporate takeovers.

Based on testimony from convicted insider trader Ivan Boesky, Milken was accused of illegally manipulating the junk bond market to enrich himself and his clients. In 1989, Milken was charged with 98 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, mail fraud and other financial crimes.

The government’s case required it to prove that Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., functioned as a criminal organization engaged in a “pattern” of criminal behavior. If convicted, Milken faced 20 years in prison and liquidation of all his assets. Instead, Milken struck a deal, pleading guilty to six lesser offenses to avoid a RICO conviction. He paid $600 million in fines and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but only served two.

John Gotti, a Gambino family crime boss in New York, earned the nickname “the Teflon Don” in the 1980s after multiple attempts to convict him under RICO failed to “stick.” The FBI later learned that Gotti intimidated witnesses and bribed jury members to win acquittals.

But in 1992, the government finally had its day. Thanks in large part to the testimony of Gotti’s henchman "Sammy the Bull” Gravano, jurors convicted Gotti for the murder of his former boss Paul Castellano in 1985, plus 12 other crimes, including racketeering. Gotti died in prison in 2002.

Under RICO, even an international soccer organization can qualify as a criminal enterprise. At the 2015 meeting of FIFA, the global governing body of professional soccer, U.S. authorities arrested nine top officials and publicly marched them out of a Zurich hotel. The FIFA officials, along with five others, were charged with a vast criminal conspiracy to collect $150 million in bribes and payoffs.

Since then, the government expanded its case against FIFA and has won 31 guilty pleas and four trial convictions. The RICO convictions stem from a long-running kickback scheme that used bribery to secure broadcast rights to high-profile FIFA events, including the World Cup.