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.
Philip Bloom is an American businessman who pleaded guilty on April 18, 2006 to conspiracy, bribery and money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority – South Central Region (CPA-SC) during the occupation of Iraq. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Bloom used CPA funds to pay out over $2 million USD in bribes, in cash, real estate, designer cars, watches, and the services of prostitutes he brought to Bagdad. Bloom accepted at least $1 million in bribes and stole a further $600,000 in cash and goods from CPA funds.
William "Big Billy" D'Elia is a former Pennsylvania mobster and was the boss of the Bufalino crime family.
The University of Michigan basketball scandal, or the Ed Martin scandal, concerned National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) rules violations resulting from the relationship between the University of Michigan, its men's basketball program, and booster Eddie L. "Ed" Martin. The violations principally involved payments booster Martin made to several players to launder money from an illegal gambling operation. It is one of the largest incidents involving payments to athletes in American collegiate history. An initial investigation by the school was joined by the NCAA, Big Ten Conference, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). As a result of this investigation, Michigan's basketball program was punished with sanctions.
The Lucchese crime family's New Jersey faction, also known as the Jersey Crew, is a powerful crew within the Lucchese crime family. The members operate throughout the Northern New Jersey area. During the 1970s into the late 1980s, the crew was led by Anthony Accetturo and his protégé Michael Taccetta. In 1987, Victor Amuso took over the family and began demanding a higher percentage of tribute from the crew. Accetturo refused and a war erupted between the New Jersey members and the New York members. This left brothers Michael and Martin Taccetta in charge of the crew as they tried to have Accetturo and his family murdered. In 1993, Accetturo defected and became a government witness. He helped convict Michael and Martin Taccetta. The crew was most recently controlled by Ralph Perna.
George "Big Georgie" DeCicco was a New York mobster and longtime captain in the Gambino crime family. DeCicco is one of the last captains of the old John Gotti administration in the 1980s who have not been under any indictment until now. DeCicco is the brother of former Gambino underboss Frank DeCicco, who was killed in a car-bomb meant for his boss John Gotti, ordered by then boss of the Genovese crime family who is now deceased, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, and Lucchese crime family leaders Vittorio "Vic" Amuso and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso as revenge for the murder of former Gambino crime family boss, Paul Castellano, a strong ally of both the Genovese and Lucchese crime families.
Gary Kaplan is the founder of BetonSports.com (BoS), an online sports betting company which took in wagers amounting to nearly $4 billion from 2002 and 2004, 98 percent of which came from the United States. In 2004, BoS went public on the London Stock Exchange.
DeSmog, founded in January 2006, is a journalistic and activist website that focuses on topics related to climate change. The site was founded, originally in blog format, by James Hoggan, president of a public relations firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Neteller is an e-money transfer service used to transfer money to and from merchants, such as forex trading firms, social networks firms. Users in some locations can withdraw funds directly using the Net+ card or transfer the balance to their own bank accounts, others are restricted.
Operation Bid Rig was a long-term investigation into political corruption in New Jersey conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, and the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey from 2002 to 2014.
John Dominick Colyandro is a Senior Advisor and Policy Director for Texas Governor Greg Abbott. He is a former executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition and the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute. He is also the former executive director of the political action committee Texans for a Republican Majority.
United States v. Scheinberg, No. 1:10-cr-00336 (2011), is a United States federal criminal case against the founders of the three largest online poker companies, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus, and a handful of their associates, which alleges that the defendants violated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and engaged in bank fraud and money laundering to process transfers to and from their customers. A companion civil case, United States v. PokerStars, et al., 11 Civ. 2564 (2011), included Full Tilt and Cereus as defendants and seeks the recovery of forfeiture equalling approximately $3 billion in assets belonging to the companies. After the indictment was unsealed on April 15, 2011, a date quickly dubbed Black Friday by the online poker community, PokerStars and Full Tilt stopped offering real money play to their United States customers. Three years after the start of the poker boom in 2003, the U.S. Congress passed UIGEA to extend existing gambling laws into cyberspace. The law made processing payments for illegal online gambling a crime; however, the defendant companies remained in the U.S. market in the belief that the law did not cover poker. A former payment processor for the companies turned state's evidence after initially being charged with violating UIGEA himself. On September 20, the civil suit was amended claiming individual fraud by Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafael Furst.
Clare Bronfman is an American heiress, convicted felon and former leader of NXIVM, a multi-level marketing company and cult based near Albany, New York. She is the youngest daughter of billionaire philanthropist and former Seagram liquor chairman Edgar Bronfman Sr. After a brief equestrian career, Bronfman began involvement in NXIVM, a business engaged in criminal activities during 1998–2018, which led to indictments on federal charges, including sex trafficking.
Liberty Reserve was a Costa Rica-based centralized digital currency service that billed itself as the "oldest, safest and most popular payment processor, serving millions all around a world". The site had over one million users when it was shut down by the United States government. Prosecutors argued that due to lax security, alleged criminal activity largely went undetected, which ultimately led to them seizing the service.
The Farmer's Market, formerly Adamflowers, was an online black market for illegal drugs. It was founded by Marc Peter Willems in or before 2006, and moved operations to the dark web in 2010 using the Tor anonymity network. It was closed and several operators and users arrested in April 2012 as a result of Operation Adam Bomb, a two-year investigation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
In 2015, United States federal prosecutors disclosed cases of corruption by officials and associates connected with the Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the governing body of association football, futsal and beach soccer.
United States virtual currency law is financial regulation as applied to transactions in virtual currency in the U.S. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has regulated and may continue to regulate virtual currencies as commodities. The Securities and Exchange Commission also requires registration of any virtual currency traded in the U.S. if it is classified as a security and of any trading platform that meets its definition of an exchange.
James "Jim" Hoggan is an author and president of Hoggan and Associates, a Vancouver-based public-relations firm. He is also the co-founder of the Web site DeSmogBlog.
