The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.
The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation is one of the largest Hispanic and Latino street and prison gangs worldwide. The gang was founded by Puerto Ricans in Chicago, Illinois in 1954.
Edward Robert Vrdolyak, also known as "Fast Eddie", is a former American politician and lawyer. He was a longtime Chicago alderman and the head of the Cook County Democratic Party until 1987 when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Chicago on the Illinois Solidarity Party ticket. He subsequently ran again in 1989 on the Republican Party ticket. He was a prominent opponent of Harold Washington and the de facto leader of the so-called "Vrdolyak 29" that opposed and blocked many of Washington's measures.
Isaac "Ike" Sims Carothers is a former alderman of the 29th Ward on the far west side of the City of Chicago. He was first elected in 1999. He resigned in 2010 after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.
Anthony Pellicano is a former high-profile Los Angeles private investigator and convicted criminal known as a Hollywood fixer. He served a term of thirty months in a federal prison for illegal possession of explosives, firearms, and homemade grenades. In 2008, he began serving an additional sentence for subsequent convictions for other crimes, including racketeering and wiretapping. Several other people were also convicted of crimes associated with their involvement with his illegal activities, including his actress girlfriend Sandra Will Carradine, film director John McTiernan, Beverly Hills police officer Craig Stevens, Los Angeles police sergeant Mark Arneson, and attorney Terry Christensen.
James Galante is a convicted felon and associate of the Genovese crime family, owner of the defunct Danbury Trashers minor-league hockey team and a defunct racecar team fielding cars for Ted Christopher, and ex-CEO of Automated Waste Disposal (AWD), a company that holds waste disposal contracts for most of western Connecticut and Westchester and Putnam counties in New York. He is known to be a community-minded philanthropist, using some of his illicit funds to make donations for a new football stadium at New Fairfield High School and a pediatric emergency department at Danbury Hospital.
Steven L. "Stevie" Crea is an American mobster and former underboss of the Lucchese crime family. In August 2020, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and racketeering.
Michael McKay is a convicted racketeer and former labor leader from the United States. He was president of American Maritime Officers (AMO) from 1993 until his conviction in 2007.
Ronald Joseph Trucchio, also known as "Ronnie One Arm", is a New York mobster with the Gambino crime family who ran The Ozone Park Boys crew during the 1990s.
United Blood Nation (UBN), also known as the East Coast Bloods, is a street, and prison gang active primarily in the New York metropolitan area. The UBN is the east coast faction of the California-based Bloods street gang. Their main source of income is the trafficking and sale of illegal drugs.
Operation Big Coon Dog was an investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) into alleged corruption surrounding the use of federal and state disaster recovery funds by public officials in Buchanan County, Virginia, United States following severe flooding in the town of Hurley in May 2002. The investigation resulted in the criminal conviction of sixteen people, including several public officials and other government employees, on charges of bribery and fraud. It has been called the largest public corruption case in western Virginia in decades and a step towards uncovering a "dark culture of corruption in Buchanan County".
John J. "Johnny Doc" Dougherty is a prominent labor leader in Philadelphia. As a leader within the Philadelphia organized labor scene, Dougherty is a prominent political figure who helps Democratic candidates get elected by directing donations and volunteers.
Preetinder Singh Bharara is an Indian-born American lawyer, author, podcaster and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years prior to leading the Southern District. According to The New York Times, Bharara was one of the "nation's most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime" during his tenure.
Operation Power Outage was a sting operation targeted at arresting and indicting members of the criminal group Armenian Power operating in the United States. The group is accused of racketeering offenses, bank fraud schemes, kidnappings, and drug trafficking. Armenian Power which originated 20 years ago in East Hollywood and has over 200 members, has developed from a street gang into an international criminal organization.
Corruption in Illinois has been a problem from the earliest history of the state. Electoral fraud in Illinois pre-dates the territory's admission to the Union in 1818, Illinois was the third most corrupt state in the country, after New York and California, judging by federal public corruption convictions between 1976 and 2012.
William "Ed" Henry is an American politician who is a Republican member of the Alabama House of Representatives. He represents the 9th district, which includes portions of Morgan, Cullman and Marshall counties.
Peter J. Halat, Jr. is an American politician and the twelfth mayor of Biloxi, Mississippi. In 1997, Halat was convicted for his involvement in a criminal conspiracy which led to the murders of Vincent Sherry, Halat's former law partner and a Mississippi judge, and Sherry's wife Margaret, a Biloxi city councilwoman, ten years previously. He was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison, of which he served 15. Pete Halat was elected mayor in 1989 and lost a re-election bid in 1993.
Jack Paul Faustin Gremillion, Sr., was the Democratic Attorney General of Louisiana from 1956 to 1972. He was widely known for his political partnership with Governor Earl Long, his opposition to desegregation and the civil rights movement, and his federal conviction on perjury charges.