RICO CHARGES UPHELD AGAINST CHICAGO POLICE OFFICERS

Mahmoud “Mike” Shamah and Richard Doroniuk were two dirty Chicago cops. With the help of a snitch they found drug dealers, or people they thought were selling drugs, arranged for their arrest and stole their money and drugs. The drugs would be used to plant on the next person.

Eventually they were caught and Shamah was convicted while Doroniuk plead guilty to Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) offenses. Specifically Shamah was charged with:

violating the substantive RICO statute. The RICO conspiracy provision makes it unlawful ‘to conspire to violate any of the provisions . . . of the RICO statute. Shamah was charged with conspiring to violate subsection (c), which makes it “unlawful for any person employed by or associated with [an] enterprise . . . to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity of collection of unlawful debt.’

Two issues were raised on appeal about the sufficiency of the evidence. “To prove a violation of § 1962(c), the government must prove the following elements: (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern of racketeering activity.” Shamah claimed that a street cop he did not exercise any control over the enterprise i.e. Chicago Police Department. But the court found that he had sufficient discretionary power over the core duties of the department: arresting people that he met the enterprise element. As the Seventh Circuit stated: “[T]he ‘prototypical’ RICO case is one where a person seizes control of an enterprise and uses it to commit criminal acts he could not do himself. . . .Only ‘a step away’ from the prototypical case is one where a criminal uses an enterprise to engage in criminal activities but is generally ‘content to allow it to conduct its normal, lawful business.” This is the latter case where the officers used the Police Department to commit robberies.

Second, Shamah claimed that as a police officer he had the right to use force to arrest people. Therefore, the use of force could not be used to prove a robbery, one of the predicate crimes of a RICO offense. But the court said their was sufficient evidence before the jury that they could find that the arrests and the use of force was merely a pretext for the taking of money and drugs. As a result the officers committed robberies. Five incidents were charged before the jury and three more were raised at sentencing. Only two predicate crimes need to be shown to convict for a RICO offense and there was more than sufficient evidence according to the Court.