RICO is a group of statutes that define and set punishments for organized crime. § 1961 et seq.) is the centerpiece of the Organized Crime Control Act. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 U.S.C.A. The declared purpose of the act is to eradicate organized crime by expanding evidence-gathering techniques for law enforcement, specifying more acts as being crimes, authorizing enhanced penalties, and providing for the Forfeiture of property owned by criminal enterprises. On the federal level, Congress passed the Organized Crime Control Act in 1970. Since the 1920s organized crime has crossed ethnic lines and is associated with no particular ethnic group.Ĭongress and many states maintain laws that severely punish crime committed by criminal enterprises. Many came to the United States, where they flourished in the art of bootlegging and other criminal activity. Those mafiosi who were not jailed or killed were forced to flee the country. In 1924 Benito Mussolini's fascist government rose to power, and Mussolini orchestrated a crackdown on the Italian mafia. The secretive Sicilian group La Cosa Nostra, along with other Sicilian mafia, were more powerful than the Italian government in the early twentieth century. Modern organized crime is generally understood to have begun in Italy in the late nineteenth century. Criminal activity carried out by an organized enterprise.