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code of silence.
Investigators thinking
Are we talking about the Mafia here? No, this is the
of turning to RICO, a Tour de France - at least according to cyclist Floyd
Landis, who has ascribed the conduct above to one
statue for mob of the most beloved sports figures in the world, the
cancer-surviving cyclist Lance Armstrong, who has
prosecutions, in Lance vigorously denied all of Landis' claims.

Armstrong case Landis is cooperating with a federal investigation

being led by BALCO-busting criminal investigator
Jeff Novitzky of the Food and Drug Administration.
BY Nathaniel Vinton Evidence is being brought to a federal grand jury in
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER Los Angeles, which has issued several subpoenas.
On Friday evening, a lawyer representing
Sunday, July 25th 2010, 4:00 AM Armstrong's former teammate, Tyler Hamilton,
disclosed to ESPN.com that Hamilton had received
such a subpoena.

"He's going to cooperate," Hamilton's attorney, Chris

Manderson, told the Daily News. "He would rather
have stayed out. If the federal government
subpoenas you, you have to cooperate or you go to
jail."

Armstrong, who completes what he says is his final

Tour de France on Sunday, has pointed out some
Texas-sized holes in Landis' credibility. Armstrong
recently hired criminal defense attorney Bryan D.
Daly, a former federal prosecutor who from 1989-
95 worked out of the same U.S. Attorney's office now
overseeing the grand jury probe.

Ena/APSeven-time champion Lance Armstrong
completes his final Tour de France on Sunday in Paris.
Imagine a group of self-selected men who
fraudulently rake in millions of dollars. They bribe
officials to suppress evidence of their crimes and
use secret bank accounts to evade taxes. Their
leader promises to destroy anyone who breaks their
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"Our objective is first to find out what's going on,"
Daly said in a recent interview with The News. "We're
trying to determine what the federal interest is here.
Why is the government devoting time and resources
to these rumors? We're going to work hard to figure
out how that is happening."
Cycling has been plagued by doping, but the latest
tales to emerge from that sport's underworld take us

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deep into Sopranos territory. Landis' accusations

have even led to speculation about the government's
turning to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act (known as RICO), a unique statute
the feds use for crackdowns on the mob.

It's all a little outlandish, says Daly, who has

experience defending against RICO charges.

"It's such a dramatic thing to even talk about," Daly

says. "It's a specialized statute to provide the
harshest legal remedies they can on highly c
riminalized operations like the Mafia, which do
serious harm to society. I don't think this is similar.
This is cycling."

Daly is a partner in the Los Angeles office of the

high-powered law firm of Sheppard Mullin. For
seven years leading up to 2008, he defended the
major law firm Milberg Weiss LLP from federal
charges that the firm and its principals took illegal
kickbacks. The indictment in that case included
RICO charges.

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