Cite as: 503 U. S. 258 (1992)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
defined not by § 10(b) itself, but rather by § 32(a) of the 1934 Act, 15 U. S. C. § 78ff(a), which authorizes criminal sanctions against any person who willfully violates the Act or rules promulgated thereunder. As we have previously made clear, the purchaser/seller standing requirement for private civil actions under § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 is of no import in criminal prosecutions for willful violations of those provisions. United States v. Naftalin, 441 U. S. 768, 774, n. 6 (1979); SEC v. National Securities, Inc., 393 U. S. 453, 467, n. 9 (1969). Thus, even if Congress intended RICO's civil suit provision to subsume established civil standing requirements for predicate offenses, that situation is not presented here.
Although the civil suit provisions of § 1964(c) lack a purchaser/seller requirement, it is still possible that one lurks in § 1961(1)'s catalog of predicate acts; i. e., it is possible that § 1961(1) of its own force limits RICO standing to the actual parties to a sale. As noted above, the statute defines "racketeering activity" to include "any offense involving . . . fraud in the sale of securities . . . punishable under any law of the United States." Unfortunately, the term "fraud in the sale of securities" is not further defined. "[A]ny offense . . . punishable under any law of the United States" presumably means that Congress intended to refer to the federal securities laws and not common-law tort actions for fraud. Unlike most of the predicate offenses listed in § 1961(1), however, there is no cross-reference to any specific sections of the United States Code. Nor is resort to the legislative history helpful in clarifying what kinds of securities violations Congress contemplated would be covered. See generally Bridges, Private RICO Litigation Based Upon "Fraud in the Sale of Securities," 18 Ga. L. Rev. 43, 58-59 (1983) (discussing paucity of legislative history); Note, RICO and Securities Fraud: A Workable Limitation, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1513, 1536- 1539 (1983) (reviewing testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee).
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