The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act was put in place to stop crime bosses and guarantee convictions for “tobacco giants” and “Mafia bosses,” but these convictions are a hard thing to come by because of the work that goes into the investigation.
However, Stephen Haas, the operator of Collateral Logistics Inc. is suing Mitt Romney and several other firms for racketeering. Haas’ company was overseeing liquidation of assets in the bankruptcy of eToys in 2001. He is alleging that Mitt Romney manipulated the sale price costing shareholders millions of dollars.
Some have claimed that price fixing is a “victimless crime,” and during the 2005 Bush administration, the RICO laws were not upheld, despite US Judge confirming the details of the accounting discrepancies. This problem does hurt people however. Price fixing is the very thing that causes an economy to crash. Changing the price changes the value for shareholders. Eventually, you lower the liquidity of the market.
eToys was eventually sold for $5 million dollars which is half of it’s value, costing investors hundreds of millions in equity. Will Romney pay for these crimes?