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. 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. This term has been applied in this pejorative sense to software developers who charge money for updated versions of their wares—who are seen as selling bug fixes for, and better-function versions of, software that would have been bugless and more functional if properly designed from the beginning.

Organized crime terminology | Criminology topics

Racket | Рэкет