It is well settled that a governmental entity may be a RICO plaintiff but not a RICO defendant, even though that means it is a ‛person“ for some purposes and not others. See Joseph, Civil RICO: A Definitive Guide § 11(A) (2d ed. 2000). In an appeal arising out of the conviction of former Illinois Governor George Ryan, United States v. Warner, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 19829 (7th Cir. August 21, 2007), the question of first impression for the Seventh Circuit was whether a state may be an "enterprise“ that supports a RICO prosecution. The Warner Court reasoned that this prosecutorial approach

may often not be absolutely necessary under RICO, but it is not forbidden. Some cases, however, are exceptional, and ours is one of them. In such a case, the prosecution may have no real alternative to naming the state as the RICO enterprise. (This of course does not mean that the state itself has violated any federal law; it may instead be a victim of the overall scheme, as are many RICO enterprises.) In such a case, the use of the state as the RICO enterprise in the indictment is analogous to the courts' treatment of the state as a market participant in a dormant commerce clause case. If the CEO of a major corporation, who ascended to that position from other senior executive positions, engaged in comparable activities, we would not only accept but expect a RICO conspiracy indictment with the corporation itself named as the RICO enterprise, even knowing that the overwhelming majority of employees, shareholders, and consumers of the corporation were innocent of wrongdoing. The situation here is the same.