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How many crimes needed for RICO
|Thanks for visiting Spodek Law Group – a second generation law firm managed by Todd Spodek. We’ve got over 40 years of combined experience handling criminal defense cases, and we’re known for handling the cases others say are unwinnable. If you’ve heard about us, it’s probably because of the Anna Delvey Netflix series, the Ghislaine Maxwell juror misconduct case, or our work on the Alec Baldwin stalking case. This article explains how many crimes you need to commit to be charged under RICO – and why that answer is more complicated than you think.
The technical answer is two. That’s what the statute says – at least two acts of racketeering activity within ten years. But if you’re facing a RICO charge based on just two crimes, something went very wrong with the prosecutor’s case, because that’s almost never how RICO works in practice.
Federal prosecutors don’t charge RICO unless they can prove a pattern of racketeering activity. Two crimes sitting alone in a file don’t make a pattern, they need to be related to each other or show continuity. Related means the crimes share the same purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission. They can’t be isolated events that happened years apart with nothing connecting them.
Continuity is where prosecutors build the real case. There are two types – closed-ended and open-ended. Closed-ended continuity means you committed related crimes over a substantial period of time. A few weeks doesn’t count. A few months probably doesn’t count. The Department of Justice looks for conduct extending over a meaningful timeframe, because Congress wrote RICO to target long-term criminal activity, not one-off crimes.
Open-ended continuity is different – it’s about the threat of future criminal conduct. Prosecutors can show this by proving the crimes were part of a long-term association that exists for criminal purposes. Or that the crimes are a regular way of conducting your ongoing business. Even two acts committed close in time can satisfy the pattern requirement if they were committed in furtherance of a criminal enterprise that existed for a considerable period.
What actually happens when federal prosecutors charge RICO? They don’t stop at two predicate acts. They charge five, ten, fifteen predicate offenses. They build overwhelming cases because RICO carries a 20-year maximum sentence per violation, and they want juries to see a clear pattern of criminal conduct, not borderline cases that might fail the continuity test.
The 35 types of RICO predicates include murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering, and various fraud offenses. Mail fraud and wire fraud are on that list – which is why RICO reaches far beyond traditional organized crime into white-collar fraud networks, corrupt police departments, and even politicians. Street gangs get charged under RICO. Corporate executives running Ponzi schemes get charged under RICO.
RICO was designed to dismantle criminal enterprises. That word – enterprise – is the other part of the equation. You’re not just committing crimes. You’re conducting those crimes through an enterprise, which can be a corporation, partnership, association, or group of individuals associated in fact. The enterprise doesn’t have to be a formal organization. It can be an informal group, as long as it has some structure and the members function as a continuing unit.
When we represent clients facing RICO charges, the cases always involve extensive criminal allegations spanning months or years. Federal prosecutors spend enormous resources investigating RICO cases before they indict. They use wiretaps, confidential informants, financial records, surveillance. By the time they charge RICO, they believe they have far more than the bare minimum of two predicate acts.
Some defendants think they can beat RICO charges by challenging the pattern requirement. That’s a legitimate defense strategy, but it requires showing that the predicate acts were isolated events without the necessary relationship or continuity. If prosecutors charged you with mail fraud from 2015 and a completely unrelated bribery offense from 2024, and there’s nothing connecting those crimes – no common participants, no similar methods, no ongoing enterprise – then the pattern might fail.
Most RICO cases don’t have that problem. Prosecutors are careful. The pattern element gets challenged, but it usually survives because the government built a case showing multiple related crimes over time. Gang prosecutions are classic examples – members commit drug trafficking, witness intimidation, robbery, assault, all in furtherance of the gang’s criminal objectives over years. Those aren’t isolated acts. That’s the definition of a pattern.
Understanding how many crimes are needed for RICO matters because it affects your defense strategy. If the government charged 15 predicate acts, you don’t need to disprove all 15. You only need to show they can’t prove at least two that satisfy the pattern requirement. Maybe some of the alleged acts didn’t actually happen. Maybe some happened outside the 10-year window. Maybe the acts they can prove aren’t related to each other or to the alleged enterprise.
But here’s what you’re really up against – if federal prosecutors filed RICO charges, they think they have you. RICO allows them to hold you responsible for crimes committed by other members of the enterprise, as long as you agreed to participate in the enterprise’s criminal conduct. You don’t have to personally commit all the predicate acts. That’s what makes RICO so powerful and so dangerous for defendants.
At Spodek Law Group, we handle federal criminal cases throughout the country. RICO prosecutions require attorneys who understand both the technical legal requirements and the broader investigation strategies federal prosecutors use. We’ve built our reputation handling complex federal cases – the kind that others say can’t be won. Todd Spodek is a second-generation criminal defense attorney who has successfully defended hundreds of criminal cases, including cases that received national media attention.
The answer to “how many crimes do you need for RICO” isn’t really about counting to two. It’s about whether prosecutors can prove you participated in an enterprise through a pattern of related criminal conduct extending over time or threatening future criminal activity. Federal prosecutors don’t charge RICO lightly. If they charged you, they believe they can prove far more than the statutory minimum. Your defense starts with understanding exactly what they’re alleging and where the weaknesses are in their pattern evidence.