Racket (crime)
Racket is an illegal business, usually run as part of
organized crime. Engaging in a racket is called
racketeering.
Several forms of racket exist. The best-known is the
protection racket, in which criminals demand money from businesses in exchange for the service of "protection" against crimes that the racketeers instigate if unpaid. Or, "pay me so that you won't have a 'mysterious fire' in your warehouse ..." A second well known example is the
numbers racket, a form of illegal
lottery.
The term
racket is also used as a
pejorative term for legitimate businesses. Typically, this usage is based on the example of the "protection racket" and indicates that the speaker believes that the business is making money by selling a solution to a problem that it created (or that it intentionally allows to continue to exist), specifically so that continuous purchases of the solution are always needed.
