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• n  someone who commits crimes for profit (especially one who obtains money by fraud or extortion)
• v  carry on illegal business activities involving crime

• Were they aware that the Government "is paying that former racketeer an annual salary of $35,000," placing him below only the President ($100,000) and the Chief Justice ($35,500 .
• Edward Miller, racketeer, had testified that he paid $4 per slot machine for protection, that Friend kept $1 and passed the balance on to "City Hall," that his monthly payments .
• In Belgium Communists call him "the grey eminence of the yellow international," in Italy "Scarface, the notorious American fascist racketeer," in Prague "the chief union splitter.

News & Articles

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• Racketeering law poorly written but still enforceable, Ohio Supreme Court rules
  Ohio’s Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law might be poorly written but not bad enough to be unenforceable. The Ohio Supreme Court yesterday upheld the 10-year mandatory sentence for those convicted of violating the RICO statute during the commission of a first-degree felony.
  June 11, 2013 - The Columbus Dispatch
• Stamford Man Pleaded Guilty To Racketeering
  STAMFORD, Conn. —  A Stamford man pleaded guilty this week to racketeering charges from his involvement in a gambling ring in the city. Dean DePreta, 45, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, in U.S. ...
  June 9, 2013 - The Daily Stamford

Quotes

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• Smedley Butler in The Herald
  Butler wrote: "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism."
• Tom Wise in guardian.co.uk
  Allegedly a gangster and racketeer, he served a six-year jail sentence in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, his eventual pardon coming at the behest of Uzbek mafia chief and heroin overlord Gafur Rakhimov, described as Usmanov's mentor,Wise said.