What Is Racketeering? We Asked an Old Timey Mobster To Explain
Racketeering, you say? Listen kid, ya better not go throwing that word around in this particular back alley. You don’t want me and my associates thinking that you’re accusing us of something we didn’t do. If I thought you were doin’ that, then I’d have to introduce you to Tire Iron Lenny and his trusty-rusty tire iron. Believe me, that’s a pair you don’t wanna have the unfortunate experience of meeting.
Wait wait wait … you’re askin’ about how racketeering relates to Donald Trump and his recent indictments? Well why didn’t ya say so? We HATE that guy. He tarnishes the name of honest mobsters everywhere. In fact, me and my organization were behind all the Twitter memes breaking his balls. Tire Iron Lenny is real nasty with a tire iron, but he’s diabolical when it comes to Photoshop.
What is racketeering? Lemme give ya a history lesson
Like baseball and mom’s apple pie, racketeering is a fine American tradition handed down from generation to generation. The word “racketeering” comes from the word “racket,” which means a “loud or disturbing noise,” just like the noises that come out of people when they’re introduced to Tire Iron Lenny and his tire iron. Eventually, the term “racket” entered into the English lexicon as a slang term for criminal activity. The egghead author and historian Robert Hendricksons gives an explanation as to how this might have come to pass in his book The Facts on File Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1997):
racket; racketeer. English pickpockets, once the best of the breed, invented the ploy of creating disturbances in the street to distract their victims while they emptied their pockets. This practice was so common that a law was passed in 1697 forbidding the throwing of firecrackers and other devices causing a racket on the city streets. From the common pickpocket ploy the old onomatopoeic English word racket, imitative like crack or bang and meaning a disturbance or loud noise, took on its additional meaning of a scheme, a dodge, illicit criminal activity. Before 1810, when it first appeared in print, the word had acquired this slang meaning in England, though it was later forgotten and the word racket for a criminal activity wasn’t used again there until it was reintroduced from America along with the American Prohibition invention from it, racketeer. The only other, improbable, explanation given for the word is that it was originally the name of an ancient, crooked dice game.
While the hoity-toity English might have invented the term, good ol’ fashioned American criminals perfected it. After the United States outlawed the sale and consumption of alcohol during the Prohibition Era in the 1920s, organized crime began to skyrocket. My ancestors began running all sorts of rackets, which are at their core dishonest and fraudulent business dealings. Back in the glory days, the mob ran all KINDS of rackets, which were then passed down to guys like me. Lemme give you some examples:
Protection racket: This is where you walk into some schmuck’s place of business demanding money in exchange for “protection” services. You gotta start with the line, “Nice place ya got here … would be a shame if something happened to it.” What’s gonna happen to it? YOU ARE. If they don’t pay you, you’ll just burn the place down.
Illegal gambling operations: Ya ever seen The Sting? Illegal gambling is the whole plot! Basically if you’re running an operation that bets on horses outside of the racetrack, you’re doing a racket.
Loan sharking: This is a good one. You lend some desperate loser money and then hike up the interest rates on him. If he don’t pay, you break his kneecaps.
Drug trafficking: Selling dimebags on the corner ain’t racketeering necessarily, but if you got it from a large organization that’s facilitating the sale of illegal drugs, you’re racketeering.
Prostitution rings: Same goes for illegal sex work. If you’re running a brothel, it’s a racket.
Smuggling and trafficking of goods or people: Human traffickers could also be considered racketeers if it is part of an organized criminal enterprise. Those guys who sold booze to secret speakeasies in the ’20s? Racketeers.
Fraudulent business activities: Ponzi schemes, MLM schemes, pyramid schemes, all these could be considered racketeering as well. Anything where you trick people outta their money is a racket.
Labor racketeering: This is what the mob did back in the golden age of organized crime in the ’70s. They infiltrated labor unions and disappeared union bosses who didn’t fall in line. Ever wonder what happened to Jimmy Hoffa? A casualty of racketeering.
Real estate schemes: Loan fraud, land fraud, title fraud, home improvement scams where you pay a buncha guys up front to build you a deck and then they pocket the money and never show up? Racketeering, racketeering, racketeering.
So what kind of racketeering did Trump do?
A rare kind. A rare kind, indeed. Prosecutors are making the case that Trump and his cronies’ organized efforts to undermine the credibility of the 2020 presidential election counts as racketeering. In fact, Trump and 18 other schmucks have been charged with 41 counts of racketeering in a sweeping 98-page indictment. How are prosecutors hitting them with so many charges? Through a little thing called RICO.
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or “RICO” laws were written in the 1970s to combat the ever-growing power and influence of the mob. Before RICO, a mob boss could send a foot soldier to extort a guy for money, but if his footsoldier got pinched by the cops, the boss could claim that he had nothing to do with it. RICO laws changed all of that. Under RICO statutes, if one member of an organized crime syndicate commits the crime, then the HIGHER-UPS in the syndicate are ALSO guilty of that crime. What this means for Trump is that he is liable for ANY AND ALL election-tampering actions done by members of his organization, even if he didn’t know about them! RICO laws allow formally powerless prosecutors to crack down on criminal organizations with impunity. And that’s exactly what they intend to do to Trump.
I’d take a face-to-tire-iron meeting with Tire Iron Lenny over a racketeering indictment any day of the week.
(featured image: Getty Images)
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