In 2008, the Police Department used federal racketeering charges to make a dent in gang activity and had some successes — gang-related crimes fell that year to 862, from 884 the year before, but in 2009 those crimes rose to 1,022, according to statistics from the department.
"I think Goldman Sachs is a racketeering entity that does whatever they can to make a dime without conscience, thought, foresight or care about ramifications," Mr. Cohodes concluded in his testimony.
A federal appeals court upheld the racketeering and fraud conviction of former Gov. George Ryan, but he will be allowed to remain free on bail while his lawyers make a new appeal.
Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, who last week was among the high-ranking officials named in a 47-count criminal indictment alleging bribery and racketeering, made a televised address in his native Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday, saying he will prove a link between soccer's governing body and his nation's elections in 2010, according to the Associated Press.
Corruption was so endemic in the Teamsters that the United States attorney in Manhattan filed a civil racketeering suit in 1988, accusing the union of having made a "devil's pact" with the mob.
"Durazo converted the police into a racketeering empire that made his predecessors' performances seem positively innocuous," wrote Alan Riding in Distant Neighbours, his book about 1980s Mexico.
"One of the rules common to both Sureño and Norteño gangs is that gang members of each side must attack members of the other side," federal prosecutors wrote in a racketeering and murder indictment made public in November.
T hat contrasts starkly with the allegations made in the racketeering suit filed in Illinois state court in August and removed to federal court here last week.
In addition, he said, "you don't make light of a federal racketeering indictment".
Judge John W. Bissell of Federal District Court in Newark pronounced the organization free of the kind of corruption that had made it the first private sports organization to be treated as a racketeering enterprise by federal prosecutors and courts.
