5: Paragraph 14 Congress made the "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations" chapter part of the federal criminal code, effective 15
October 1970, to be able to prosecute organized crime for using
legitimate businesses as fronts or money laundries for the proceeds of
criminal activity. It defines "pattern of racketeering activity" to be
at least two felony violations of certain state or federal statutes
committed by the same person within 10 years, and at least one act has
to have been after this law went into effect. The statute makes it a
crime to use money from such racketeering activity to start, buy, or run
a business engaged in interstate commerce or to conspire with somebody
else to do so.
5: Paragraph 15 Besides being a criminal law, the statute also
provides that anybody "injured in his business or property" by a
violation of the RICO statute can sue in federal court and "shall
recover threefold the damages he sustains and the cost of the suit,
including a reasonable attorney's fee." The so-called "predicate acts"
that form the pattern of racketeering activity include mail and wire
fraud ("wire" usually means "telephone"), embezzling from union funds
(which some of the pension funds were), and securities fraud.
5: Paragraph 16 I said in my complaint that Hutton Group had set up
Hutton Trust to allow Hutton Group to collect trustees' fees from the
same accounts it was collecting brokerage commissions from, through
Hutton & Co.
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