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My understanding of RICO (which is not explicitly called out in this entertaining and informative post) is that RICO claims are intended to lower the burden of proof as it relates to circumstantial evidence as it explicitly applies to efficiently-run and organizationally-convoluted organized crime...for those cases where conviction would be unlikely without the provisions of the RICO act.

If you go down the list, the cases where RICO is used as a club but either dismissed or pled out are the cases that aren't mafia or street gangs, while the cases where RICO convictions are made are all mafia and street gangs. This probably leads to the confusion - people who remember Mike Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert certainly don't understand what he did wrong other than be a greedy fuck, and the fact that he got prosecuted under RICO further muddies the waters. Meanwhile, Trump was facing a RICO charge under Trump University but he settled out so it's easy to make that Trump=RICO allegation because people's imaginations are primed.