RICO is two statutes wearing one name. On the criminal side it lets the government charge a group of loosely connected people with a single offense carrying twenty years and sweeping forfeiture. On the civil side it converts an ordinary fraud claim into treble damages and a fee award, which is why it gets pleaded far more often than it should.
Both versions turn on the same handful of elements. In the Fifth Circuit, one of them does most of the work.
How the statute is built
There are four prohibitions, and only one is charged with any regularity.
- Investing racketeering income in an enterprise. Rarely charged. A civil claimant must show harm from the investment itself, not merely from the underlying acts.
- Acquiring or maintaining control of an enterprise through racketeering. Also rare, and it carries the same requirement that the injury flow from the acquisition rather than the predicate acts.
- Conducting an enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity. This is the provision in nearly every case, criminal and civil.
- Conspiring to do any of the above.
The operative provision does not reach everyone connected to a scheme. A defendant must have participated in the operation or management of the enterprise — taking part in the predicate acts alone is not enough. That distinction is frequently the difference between a defendant who belongs in the case and one who does not.
Enterprise
An enterprise can be a legal entity or an association in fact. The association-in-fact version needs a purpose, relationships among the people involved, and enough longevity to pursue that purpose. It does not need a hierarchy, a name, fixed roles, meetings or rules, and decisions can be made ad hoc.
The Fifth Circuit’s own formulation, which predates the Supreme Court’s and is still applied here, asks whether the enterprise exists separately from the pattern of racketeering, whether it is an ongoing organization, and whether its members function as a continuing unit. The first of those is the pressure point: an alleged enterprise that is nothing more than the people who committed the acts, doing the acts, is vulnerable.
Distinctness. Under the principal provision the defendant and the enterprise must be different. A corporation cannot be both. An officer or employee can be the defendant with the corporation as the enterprise, and an association in fact that includes participants beyond the named defendants is distinct from each of them. What does not work is alleging that a company, through its own agents, ran its own affairs badly — conducting your own business is not conducting an enterprise’s affairs.
Pattern — where these cases are decided
Two predicate acts are necessary but not sufficient. They must be related, and they must amount to or threaten continued criminal activity. Relatedness is usually easy. Continuity is where claims die, and the Fifth Circuit applies it as strictly as any court in the country.
Closed-ended continuity requires related predicates over a substantial period. Seven months has been held insufficient here. Courts in this circuit generally look for at least a year, and often considerably more.
Open-ended continuity requires either a specific threat of repetition into the future or proof that the predicate acts are a regular way of conducting the defendant’s ongoing legitimate business. A one-off fraud does not qualify, and the Fifth Circuit has held that two or even four similar acts do not by themselves threaten repetition.
The single-scheme problem. A single scheme can in principle be a pattern. In practice, where the conduct has one objective and a finite set of victims — defrauding one company, executing one transaction, selling one business — the pattern element usually fails however many acts were committed in service of it. The Fifth Circuit has been explicit that the pattern requirement exists to keep RICO from becoming a substitute for garden-variety fraud claims belonging in state court. Where the acts are part and parcel of a single otherwise lawful transaction, the analysis does not even reach continuity.
This is the first thing we test in any civil RICO claim, on either side of it.
Predicates, and a Fifth Circuit trap
The list of qualifying offenses is long: state-law crimes including bribery and extortion, and a catalog of federal offenses including mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, obstruction, witness tampering and money laundering — the last of which is frequently charged alongside, and is dealt with on our Federal Money Laundering page.
Mail and wire fraud are the predicates in most civil cases, because almost any commercial fraud touches a phone or an email. Two consequences follow. First, the heightened pleading standard applies — the who, what, when, where and how must be pleaded with particularity. Second, and this is specific to this circuit: where mail or wire fraud is the predicate, a civil claimant must show reliance, even though reliance is not an element of the fraud statutes themselves. Claims that would survive elsewhere fail here on that point alone.
A predicate need not have been separately charged or proved to conviction, and an acquittal on a predicate does not bar the RICO count — though it remains powerful evidence for the defense.
Conspiracy, and why acquittal on the main count is not the end
The conspiracy provision is broader than most defendants expect. A defendant need not personally commit, or even agree to commit, two predicate acts. It is enough to have adopted the goal of furthering the criminal endeavor, and there is no overt-act requirement. A person can be acquitted on the substantive count and convicted on the conspiracy count in the same case — which is exactly what happened in the Supreme Court decision that settled the rule, a case that came out of a Texas sheriff’s department.
For the defense this means the conspiracy count has to be attacked on its own terms: what the defendant actually agreed to further, and whether that agreement extended to the enterprise’s affairs or only to a discrete transaction.
On the civil side the conspiracy provision is narrower: a plaintiff must show injury from an act that is itself independently wrongful under the statute.
Civil RICO — standing, causation and leverage
The remedy is why it gets pleaded. A successful claimant recovers three times its damages plus costs and attorney’s fees. A million-dollar claim becomes a three-million-dollar threat with fees on top. That leverage is the reason RICO appears in commercial disputes that have nothing to do with organized crime, and it is why the elements are enforced as strictly as they are.
Standing. The statute reaches injury to business or property. Personal injury, emotional distress and reputational harm are outside it.
What changed in 2025. The Supreme Court held that business or property losses are not barred merely because they derive from a personal injury — the question is the kind of harm claimed, not its cause. That abrogated a line of authority, including in this district, holding the opposite. It is a real expansion, and it should not be overread: the claimant must still prove proximate cause, still prove a pattern, and the Court itself noted that not every lost wage or medical expense is a business or property injury.
Proximate cause is the other graveyard. The violation must have led directly to the injury. A causal chain that is remote, contingent or passes through a third party generally fails. The Fifth Circuit has expressly rejected foreseeability as the test. Where the direct victim of the fraud is someone else — a government agency, an employer, a competitor’s customer — the claim is usually gone.
Timing. Civil claims carry a four-year period running from when the claimant knew or should have known of the injury. Discovery of the injury starts the clock; discovery of the pattern, the enterprise or the defendant’s identity does not. A new predicate act within the period does not revive claims for earlier injuries.
One category is excluded outright. Conduct actionable as securities fraud cannot be the basis of a civil RICO claim unless the defendant has been criminally convicted in connection with it.
What a criminal RICO case costs beyond the sentence
Forfeiture is built into the statute. On conviction the court orders forfeiture of any interest acquired or maintained through the racketeering, any interest in or claim against the enterprise, and any property constituting or derived from the proceeds. This is not a discretionary add-on — it is part of the judgment, and it reaches interests held long before the charged conduct where they were acquired through the pattern.
The guideline is borrowed. Sentencing does not run on a RICO-specific number. The guideline takes the offense level from the underlying racketeering activity — the fraud, the bribery, the drug offenses — which means the exposure is driven by conduct that in some cases was never separately charged. Relevant-conduct principles then determine how much of the enterprise’s activity is attributed to an individual defendant. For a peripheral participant, that attribution fight is frequently worth more than the trial.
Pre-trial restraint. Because forfeiture attaches to interests in the enterprise, the government can seek to restrain business assets before any conviction. For an operating company, the restraint is often more damaging than the eventual sentence, and it has to be contested immediately rather than at sentencing.
What we do
We defend RICO charges and RICO conspiracy charges in federal court, and we litigate civil RICO claims on both sides — attacking them at the pleading stage where the enterprise, pattern, reliance or causation elements are not met, and bringing them where the facts genuinely support the elements rather than as leverage.
The work includes moving to dismiss on the pattern and distinctness elements, litigating the operation-or-management requirement, defending criminal forfeiture, and appeals. Forfeiture in a criminal RICO case reaches interests in the enterprise and proceeds of the racketeering activity, and the sentencing guideline is driven by the underlying racketeering conduct rather than by RICO itself.
Questions we are asked
Someone has pleaded RICO against my company. How seriously should I take it?
Seriously enough to move to dismiss properly, and not so seriously that you pay a premium for the label. Most civil RICO claims attached to a commercial dispute fail on pattern or proximate cause. The claim’s value lies in the treble-damages threat, which evaporates if the elements do not hold.
Our dispute involves one transaction and one counterparty. Can that be RICO?
Rarely. A single scheme with one objective and a finite set of victims usually fails the continuity requirement in this circuit regardless of how many emails and invoices are recast as predicate acts.
Does RICO require organized crime?
No. It reaches ordinary businesses and individuals. But the elements were written with long-term criminal conduct in mind, and courts here enforce them that way.
I was acquitted of the underlying offense. Can they still charge RICO?
Yes. Predicate acts are elements of the RICO offense rather than separate charges, and an acquittal does not bar the prosecution — though it is useful evidence.
I was on the edges of this. Does that protect me?
On the substantive count it may: there is a requirement that you participated in operating or managing the enterprise, not merely that you took part in acts. On the conspiracy count it protects you less, because you need not have agreed to commit any particular predicate.
How long do I have to bring a civil claim?
Four years from when you knew or should have known of the injury — not from when you worked out that a pattern or an enterprise existed. That distinction ends claims that clients assume are live.
Can I recover for a business loss that started with an injury to me personally?
Since 2025, that is no longer categorically barred. Whether the claim survives still depends on proximate cause and pattern, and those remain demanding.
Results depend on the facts of each matter. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.