On this day, Nov. 19, in 1986, major leaders of the mob were found guilty on federal RICO charges, which was a rarely used prosecutorial tool that has since been called the atomic bomb of organized crime and the darling of the Justice Department.
The Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 provided for extended penalties for acts performed as a criminal organization. But RICO had been rarely used because prosecutors hadn¹t understood it. That was until the FBI¹s New York office decided RICO could be the hammer to smash the Mafia on the theory that the Five Families were linked by a commission that worked as a criminal organization.
After a five-year investigation that included tapes of bosses describing how the enterprise worked, Rudy Giuliani, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, got indictments for 50 major mob leaders.
Three of the five bosses were found guilty and sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. A fourth had been gunned down in front of a steakhouse before trial. Giuliani went on to become two-term mayor of New York.
-Scott McCabe
