Semper Fi

Title 18, United States Code, Section 1951 Interfering with Commerce by Threats of Violence (Hobbs Act)

by Don Goulet

“Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays or affects commerce or the movement of any article in commerce by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires to do so or commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in furtherance of a plan to violate this section shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both.”

A great statute used often by the FBI to investigate illegal operations involving things such as forcible hijacked trucks/trailers involved in interstate commerce. It has and continues to be used to convict and investigate individuals who cross state lines to rob pharmacies, banks, or other institutions involved in interstate commerce. Interesting enough, the term extortion used in the statute is further defined as obtaining the property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of threat or force, or fear under cover of official right. Commerce is defined as all commerce between points within the same state to anyplace outside such state.

In consideration of those definitions, I was able to open a Hobbs Act matter when I was assigned to the Muncie, Indiana FBI office in 1983. I received information indicating that several prostitutes were being extorted by some local police officials (under color of official right) who collected a percentage of the proceeds weekly from the prostitutes’ earnings. The police officers allegedly threatened to break their legs and have their true names used in any police raid made upon them were they not to comply with this scheme.

It was a classic Hobbs Act violation and the commerce clause was easily defined inasmuch as some clients and truck drivers traveled from outside to use the services and also the services of the brothel itself.

Being a classic public corruption matter, this case was stopped dead in its tracks for some strange reason when the local Assistant United States Attorney I was working with ruled that since the prostitutes had not declared their earnings to the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and did not pay tax accordingly, they lacked credibility as witnesses. If that were a standard of lawful procedure in the United States legal system, you could never use a mobster testifying against another mobster, as most mobsters don’t declare their illegally gotten gains to the IRS.

In another matter, in 1993, I had occasion to operate an eight-month undercover operation with Passamaquoddy Police Chief Fred Moore. Towards the end of the undercover operation, two individuals who had been unknown to us prior to that time approached Moore. They were Louis Jack Tarbell from the St. Regis Indian Reservation located in upstate New York, and Charles “Chuck” Mancuso from Buffalo, New York. During the short course of the operational part of our investigation, Moore and I had occasion to rip off $80,000 worth of tobacco products from these two individuals passing the illegal tobacco that was smuggled into Canada to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Late that afternoon, Mancuso contacted Moore by telephone and wanted to know where his $80,000 was. Moore advised him that he didn’t have any money and didn’t know what Mancuso was talking about. Later on, during a subsequent conversation, Mancuso told Moore on the telephone that he did not know who he was messing around with, that when he, Mancuso, returned to New York they would break his legs and in turn he would be forced to come back to the reservation, look up Moore, and break his legs.

This was a classic Hobbs Act matter type case. The information was provided to the United States Attorney’s Office who promptly dispatched the case when Mancuso and Tarbell decided to plead guilty to lesser charges.

If you own a business that has any type of connection or nexus with interstate commerce, and someone puts you in fear or threatens to harm you to obtain goods or services from you, then the Hobbs Act may very well have been violated.