A New Jersey woman is dragging an organisation of racketeers into court who tried to extort thousands of dollars from her. Tony Soprano? No, the RIAA.

Michele Scimeca was threatened with a "John Doe" suit by the RIAA, she is counter-suing under the RICO laws.

The music industry considers Michele Scimeca a pirate. The Morris County mom has her own term for record executives:

Racketeers.

In what legal experts described as a novel strategy, Scimeca is citing federal racketeering laws like the one that jailed mob boss John Gotti to countersue record labels that accused her in December of sharing some 1,400 copyrighted songs over the Internet.

The Rockaway Township woman, who claims she was targeted for her teenager's school research project, is among hundreds of individuals sued by the music industry since last summer. Another 531 computer users were sued yesterday in "John Doe" suits filed in Trenton, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Orlando.

Labels are using "scare tactics (that) amount to extortion" in efforts to extract settlements, Scimeca alleges in legal papers sent to the U.S. District Court in Newark.

"They're banding together to extort money, telling people they're guilty and they will have to pay big bucks to defend their cases if they don't pony up now. It is fundamentally not fair," Scimeca's lawyer, Bart Lombardo, said yesterday. The Cranford attorney said he occasionally downloads songs for personal use and sees nothing wrong with that.

Morris Levy — this is your life!