## Facts

- Morris J. Eisen, P.C. was a large Manhattan personal-injury law firm whose lawyers, investigators, and staff were prosecuted as members of a RICO enterprise.
- The government proved a long-running scheme to corrupt civil personal-injury litigation to inflate settlements and verdicts, increasing contingent fees.
- The scheme included fabricating or altering physical evidence, coaching witnesses to give false testimony, and arranging for witnesses to change testimony or not appear.
- Firm personnel made payments or provided benefits to influence witness testimony, forming the basis for state-law witness bribery acts.
- The firm used the mails for pleadings, correspondence, and settlement- and payment-related materials in connection with the fraudulent lawsuits.
- After a four-month joint jury trial in the Eastern District of New York, defendants were convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) (substantive RICO) and § 1962(d) (RICO conspiracy), predicated on mail fraud and New York witness bribery.

## Issues

1. Whether litigation misconduct involving perjury and falsified evidence can support RICO liability when charged through enumerated predicates of mail fraud and witness bribery, even though perjury is not a RICO predicate.
2. Whether the mailings used in the civil cases were sufficiently connected to the fraudulent scheme to satisfy the mailing element of 18 U.S.C. § 1341.
3. Whether the evidence adequately established a RICO “enterprise” and a “pattern of racketeering activity” based on continuity and relatedness across multiple cases.
4. Whether trial management rulings (including joinder, admission of evidence from multiple lawsuits, and jury instructions) or sentencing determinations required reversal or resentencing.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed the judgments of conviction.
- The court held that the conduct was properly prosecuted under RICO using mail fraud and witness bribery predicates, notwithstanding that perjury itself is not a RICO predicate.
- The court concluded that the mailings were incident to essential parts of the fraudulent scheme and supported the mail-fraud predicates.
- The court upheld the use of New York witness bribery as racketeering activity and found ample proof of a firm-wide enterprise and a continuing, related pattern.
- The court rejected challenges to joinder, evidentiary rulings, and jury instructions as lacking reversible error.
- The court largely upheld the sentences, with any adjustments not affecting the validity of the convictions.

## Legal Principles

- RICO liability may rest on enumerated predicate offenses (such as mail fraud and witness bribery) even if the scheme also uses conduct (such as perjury) that is not itself a listed predicate.
- Mail fraud is satisfied when mailings are incident to an essential part of a scheme to obtain money or property by deceit; routine litigation-related mailings may qualify when they further execution or concealment of the fraud.
- State-law bribery of witnesses can constitute “racketeering activity” under 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1) when the evidence shows corrupt payments intended to influence testimony or prevent testimony.
- A “pattern of racketeering activity” is supported by repeated, related predicate acts showing continuity and a common purpose carried out through an identifiable enterprise.
- In a complex multi-defendant RICO prosecution, joinder and admission of evidence from multiple underlying events may be proper when overlapping proof is needed to establish the enterprise and pattern, subject to limiting instructions.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit sustained RICO convictions arising from systematic corruption of civil litigation by a personal-injury law firm, holding that repeated acts of mail fraud and witness bribery constituted a pattern of racketeering activity and were not insulated from RICO merely because perjury was among the scheme’s methods.


United States v. Eisen, 974 F.2d 246 (2d Cir. 1992)