Civil RICO for the Business Litigator: Pleading the Claim and Trebling the Damages

Joshua M. Robbins, Partner | Crowell & Moring

Joshua M. Robbins is a partner at Crowell & Moring, where he handles high-stakes fraud litigation and investigations, with particular depth in health care and life sciences, white collar defense, and antitrust matters. A former federal prosecutor, he has tried and litigated RICO claims on both the plaintiff and the defense side.

• Education & Credentials

Josh earned his A.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard College, where he received the John Harvard Scholarship, his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stanley Marcus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He is admitted to practice in California, the District of Columbia, and New York, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and in the U.S. District Courts for the Central, Northern, and Southern Districts of California and the District of Columbia.

• Recognition & Leadership

Josh is ranked by Chambers USA (2025) and has been named a Los Angeles Business Journal Leader of Influence (2025), a Benchmark Litigation Star (2022–2026), and to Best Lawyers in America (2022–2026). The Daily Journal recognized his team’s result as a Top Defense Verdict (2024) and named him among its Top White-Collar Lawyers (2021–2023). As a federal prosecutor, he received the Department of Justice Director’s Award for Superior Performance (2015).

• Professional Involvement

Josh teaches trial advocacy at the U.C. Irvine School of Law, serves as a Ninth Circuit Lawyer Representative, and is president of the Harvard Law School Association of Orange County. He has also served as an expert witness on health care anti-kickback law.

• Experience

Josh served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California from 2009 to 2016. His RICO work includes a defense verdict for a water manufacturer in a $200 million federal antitrust and RICO lawsuit, plaintiff-side representations against a global religious organization for human trafficking and against a city government and its officials for public corruption, and the defense of an artificial intelligence company in a RICO and computer fraud lawsuit.

Callan G. Stein, Partner | Troutman Pepper Locke

Callan G. Stein is a partner in the Boston office of Troutman Pepper Locke, where his practice spans complex civil litigation and white-collar criminal defense, with a concentration in civil and criminal RICO, health care fraud and abuse, government enforcement defense, internal investigations, and collegiate athletics and name, image, and likeness (NIL) matters. He hosts the firm’s RICO Report podcast and has written more than sixty articles on RICO, the False Claims Act, and related enforcement topics.

• Education & Credentials

Cal earned his J.D. from Boston University School of Law and his B.A., cum laude, from Brandeis University. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in the U.S. District Courts for the District of Massachusetts and the District of Rhode Island, and before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits.

• Recognition & Leadership

Cal has been named to Best Lawyers in America for Health Care Law (2021–2026), Criminal Defense: White-Collar (2023–2026), and Litigation – Health Care (2026) and recognized in the JD Supra Readers’ Choice Awards for White-Collar Defense (2023, 2025), Boston Magazine’s Top Lawyers list for Criminal Defense: White Collar (2021–2023), and Legal 500 United States for white collar criminal defense (2019). Earlier recognition includes Massachusetts Rising Stars (2014–2019) and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s Up & Coming Attorney honor (2013).

• Professional Involvement

Cal is a faculty member of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and teaches trial advocacy to his firm’s associates. He hosts the RICO Report podcast, co-hosts the Highway to NIL podcast, and edits the NIL Revolution blog. He is a member of the Boston Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association, and the American Health Lawyers Association.

• Experience

Cal’s civil RICO results include a defense verdict for a satellite company following an international arbitration on claims alleging more than $100 million in damages, dismissals of civil RICO claims for a family business facing nearly $20 million in alleged damages, a thyroid medicine manufacturer, Fox News defendants, a bank and credit reporting agency, and a medical device company, and the successful prosecution of civil RICO claims against former Chinese distributors for wire fraud and trade secret misappropriation. In criminal RICO-adjacent work, he represented Barry Cadden in the New England Compounding Center case, securing not guilty verdicts on all 25 second-degree murder charges after a three-month trial, and he obtained the first reported summary judgment for a defendant in a Paycheck Protection Program fraud qui tam action under the False Claims Act.

SESSION 1 – Pleading a Civil RICO Claim That Survives Dismissal | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This session equips business litigators with a granular, element-by-element framework for drafting civil RICO complaints that survive Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal. Attorneys will examine the four required elements under § 1962(c), the Rule 9(b) particularity standard as applied to mail and wire fraud predicates, the enterprise-distinctness and operation-or-management requirements, and the pattern-of-racketeering continuity analysis under H.J., Inc. Drawing on recent Fifth and Eighth Circuit dismissals and the February 2026 Farmers v. 1st Choice decision, attendees will leave with a practical checklist for pre-suit investigation, subsection selection, and complaint architecture.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Proving Causation and Recovering Treble Damages and Fees in Civil RICO | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This session covers the causation and damages phase of civil RICO litigation, from satisfying the direct-relationship proximate cause requirement through calculating and recovering mandatory treble damages and attorney’s fees under 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c). Attorneys will learn the governing trilogy of Supreme Court decisions on RICO proximate cause, the mechanics of treble-damages proof, and the lodestar framework for fee recovery — all updated for the Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling in Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn. Attendees leave with a practical framework for building a damages case that survives defense challenges and for advising clients on realistic recovery ranges.