Racket

Four men who allegedly used profits from Baltimore's drug trade to try to make a name in the rap music business face rarely used federal racketeering charges that could bring the death penalty, federal authorities announced yesterday as they linked the group to as many as five unsolved city homicides. These include the slaying in March 2002 of an associate of former heavyweight boxing champion Hasim S. Rahman and a woman the man was dating at the time. The group also is charged with a second double killing less than a month later - a crime solved in part with the help of an inadvertent cell phone message.

CHICAGO - A federal grand jury indicted former Illinois Gov. George Ryan yesterday on an extensive list of corruption charges, including taking money and gifts in exchange for granting government contracts. The indictment, the result of a five-year racketeering investigation, is the latest chapter in a scandal that dogged Ryan's four years as governor and led him to end his political career. Federal prosecutors allege that between 1990 and last year - when he served as secretary of state and governor - Ryan and his family took more than $167,000 worth of gifts, vacations, cash and other bribes.

BUFFALO, N.Y - A New York company accused yesterday its would-be partner in a deal to buy Rosecroft Raceway in Prince George's County of using a decades-old organized crime conviction as a "pretext" to back out of the agreement so it could negotiate with someone else. Terry Conners, a lawyer for Buffalo-based Delaware North Companies, a privately held conglomerate that specializes in professional sports and food service concessions, leveled the accusation during a hearing in U.S. District Court.

PARIS - On Tuesday, Martin Verkerk will be back home in the Netherlands, playing tennis for his club team, hoping to help it advance to the league finals. But first Verkerk has something else to do. Win the French Open. Verkerk, playing in wide-eyed amazement while serving aces on the red clay and making volleys he couldn't dream of a year ago, upset seventh-seeded Guillermo Coria of Argentina, 7-6 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (0), in a semifinal yesterday at Roland Garros. "I can not explain this.

A federal judge sentenced a Baltimore man to nearly 35 years in prison yesterday for a list of convictions that included racketeering, drug possession and distribution, armed robbery, attempted murder and arson. The case against James Gross Jr., 26, and four others marked the first time in recent years that federal prosecutors in Baltimore won convictions against a city drug organization under racketeering laws used elsewhere against Mafia crime families. James Wilkes, 34, of Baltimore was sentenced to 25 years for being a felon in possession of a firearm and assault with intent to commit serious injury in aid of racketeering.

The predawn fire that destroyed the Rosedale nightclub Strawberry's 5000 on a cold January morning two years ago appeared at first to be little more than a bad ending to a business troubled by rowdy crowds, parking lot fights and sagging profits. As they sifted through the bar's charred remains, however, investigators began uncovering the outline of what they later would describe as a violent and highly organized crime ring with a series of legitimate business fronts, connections to prominent Baltimore figures and ties to the city's drug trade reaching back more than a decade.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court declared yesterday that federal extortion and racketeering laws could not be used against abortion protesters blocking clinic entrances, handing a victory to civil liberties groups that said a contrary decision would have stifled all types of political protest. Ruling 8-1 in a Chicago case, the court said abortion protesters had not committed extortion under federal law when they blocked clinic entrances. The court also rejected claims that the protesters, led by Operation Rescue's Joseph Scheidler, had violated federal anti-racketeering laws originally aimed at combating organized crime.

A federal jury in Baltimore found a group of area men guilty yesterday of using nightclubs and other businesses as fronts for a violent crime ring, marking the first time in recent history that U.S. prosecutors have dismantled a city drug gang under the same racketeering laws that helped bring down Mafia figures elsewhere. The trial, which stretched over seven weeks and featured testimony about the ringleaders' ties to former state Sen. Michael B. Mitchell Sr. and boxer Hasim S. Rahman, could become an important test case for prosecutors as they weigh whether to bring similar organized crime charges to fight Baltimore's loosely structured drug trade.

Prosecutors summing up a monthlong federal racketeering case told jurors yesterday that the complex case came down simply to the selfishness of one man who used his son, friends and others to carve out his empire, fueled with drug money and disguised by area nightclubs and other businesses. Jurors who will weigh the first case using a federal racketeering law in recent history in Maryland's federal courts must determine, however, whether it was lead defendant James E. Gross Sr. who called the shots in the alleged crime ring or his former friend and business partner, Louis W. Colvin, who testified against Gross as part of a plea agreement with the government.

Jurors are expected to hear closing arguments today in a monthlong federal racketeering trial that concluded testimony yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore with defense attorneys calling just two witnesses. None of the five defendants testified in the case, in which federal prosecutors say the men used Baltimore-area bars and other businesses as fronts for a violent, well-organized crime ring that was responsible for arsons, insurance fraud, drug dealing and witness tampering.