The lawyer who represented the mother and kids that I helped get away from the C.U.T. cult here in Montana (a cult led by a woman, by the way)
mentioned that the RICO laws should be used against organized criminal groups like C.U.T. that were taking money and property from followers, laundering it and enriching the leader(s).

Usually, people think of the RICO laws in terms of fighting the Mafia.

That is not the first time I've heard of the idea of using RICO (Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) to prosecute destructive cults. And today I found this article referring to the FLDS and RICO. The Jeffs group certainly has a pattern of "bleeding the beast", taking money from the government with welfare fraud and getting government bids on contracts.

You may remember the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, caused by faulty O rings. It was an FLDS company that manufactured those O rings.

Here is the article mentioning RICO and FLDS.

THE FLDS AND ORGANIZED CRIME PROSECUTIONS
Click Here