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Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit (e.g., money or goods) through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence ; the bulk of this article deals with such cases.
Many types of crime can be covered by the "RICO" Act. [6] A protection racket is a form of extortion whereby racketeers offer to "protect" property from damage in exchange for a fee, while also threatening (possibly in a veiled way), in part or in whole, to execute the kind of damage they claim to be offering protection against.
Ocasio v. United States, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified whether the Hobbs Act's definition of conspiracy to commit extortion only includes attempts to acquire property from someone who is not a member of the conspiracy. [1]
The Hobbs Act (enacted 1934), [1] the mail and wire fraud statutes (enacted 1872), including the honest services fraud provision, [2] the Travel Act (enacted 1961), [3] the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (enacted 1970), [4] and the federal program bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 666 (enacted 1984), [5] permit the ...
After initially being charged with coercion under state law, Sekhar was tried and convicted for attempted extortion under the federal Hobbs act. Sekhar's lawyers contended that the advice of a lawyer employed by the state was not a form of property that could be sought by threats, and hence that the extortion charge was not applicable in this case.
The Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) is a United States federal law that enables US authorities to prosecute foreign officials who demand or accept bribes from a US citizen, US company, or within a US jurisdiction. FEPA was signed into law by Joe Biden on December 22, 2023, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal ...
DiCarlo and Mackenzie were charged with violating the Hobbs Act, which forbids extortion by public officials, and the Travel Act, which forbids crossing state lines for the purpose of extortion. On August 20, DiCarlo and Mackenzie pleaded not guilty and were released on $1,000 bail. [ 5 ]
[4] [5] The term "official act" does not occur in the statutes charged in the case; rather, the parties to the trial had agreed that they would use the definition of that term given in the federal bribery statute 18 U.S.C. § 201(a)(3) in interpreting those statutes. Thus, by construing the term narrowly the Supreme Court narrowed the ...