The Maple Syrup Mafia: A History of Organized Crime in Canada
It’s no secret that organized crime is everywhere. From Japan and Italy to Israel and Mexico, there seems to be no place on earth where an organized crime family doesn’t exist. You may think that one of the few safe places left is friendly, welcoming Canada, which many believe is so safe that people there always leave their doors unlocked. Think again.
This book delves into the often ignored but nevertheless bloody world of Canadian mobs. You’ll meet the Rizzutos, a powerful family with connections to the legendary Five Families of the American Mafia. Then there’s the Cotroni family formed by Vic “the Egg” Cotroni, an ex-wrestler with ties to the Ndrangheta. You’ll also learn about their connections to the blood-soaked Quebec Biker War, where the Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine battled for 17 years and claimed 150 lives. And just wait until you get to Toronto!
Prepare to be shocked by the true story of organized crime in Canada. It proves that there is truth to the expression, “it’s the quiet ones you have to watch.”
This book delves into the often ignored but nevertheless bloody world of Canadian mobs. You’ll meet the Rizzutos, a powerful family with connections to the legendary Five Families of the American Mafia. Then there’s the Cotroni family formed by Vic “the Egg” Cotroni, an ex-wrestler with ties to the Ndrangheta. You’ll also learn about their connections to the blood-soaked Quebec Biker War, where the Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine battled for 17 years and claimed 150 lives. And just wait until you get to Toronto!
Prepare to be shocked by the true story of organized crime in Canada. It proves that there is truth to the expression, “it’s the quiet ones you have to watch.”
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The Maple Syrup Mafia PDF and ePub |
Excerpt
Introduction
Even though they are separate countries with very different histories and governments, the United States and Canada share the same economy. Many businesses operate on both sides of the border, including organized crime.
The Mafia is no exception: Canada’s Italian crime families are as large and as powerful as any in the United States. They also have a reputation for violence and corruption that rivals their counterparts south of the border.
Like the American Mafia, Canada’s mob has historically been centered in urban areas with a large Italian population. In Canada, this means the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the nation’s two largest cities, Toronto and Montreal, both of which are located a short distance from the U.S. border.
The origins of the modern Canadian Mafia can be traced to the 1940s and ’50s and the beginnings of the international drug trade. The increasing demand for heroin coincided with a surge of Italian immigration into Canada. Most of the immigrants were honest and hardworking citizens, but as in the U.S., a small core of hardened gangsters from Sicily and Italy came to the New World in search of opportunity.
Chapter 1: The Montreal Connection – The Mafia in Quebec
The Canadian city most associated with the Mafia is Montreal, which is home to two of Canada’s best known mob families. Montreal has also seen plenty of mob violence, including several bloody gang wars and numerous Mafia hits. Much of this violence stemmed from Montreal’s close proximity to the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S., which made it a natural drug conduit.
The Rizzutos: The Sixth Family
The most famous crime family in Montreal is the Rizzutos, who are closely connected with New York’s Bonanno crime family, one of the legendary Five Families that forms the top level of the American Mafia. Interestingly, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers the Rizzutos a Canadian offshoot of the Bonnanos, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) think the Rizzutos are an independent organization. Some mob scholars have went as far as to label the Rizzutos “the Sixth Family”, which means they have as much influence in the underworld as their New York brethren.
The Rizzuto Family began in February 1954 when Nicolo and Libertina Rizzuto emigrated from poverty-stricken Sicily to Canada. Nicolo and Libertina were looking for a better life in Canada for their eight-year-old son Vito. Nicolo Rizzuto certainly found wealth, power, and success in Canada as the founder and leader of a powerful mob family.
The Rizzutos settled in Montreal, and newspaper reports indicate that Nicolo quickly set himself up as a force to be reckoned with in the local underworld. The Rizzutos were certainly in the right time and the right place; Montreal was a major conduit in the legendary French Connection, the heroin pipeline from the Mediterranean to the American Heartland. There was big money to made moving heroin, particularly for experienced gangsters with connections in Italy and France.
It is highly likely that Nicolo Rizzuto moved to Montreal specifically to engage in the drug trade. He arrived in the city one year after mobsters Vic “the Egg” Cotroni and Carmine Galante, the boss of the Bonnano’s, one of New York’s five mob families, opened a major heroin pipeline through Montreal. Rizzuto and other Sicilian mobsters might have been sent to Montreal to oversee the heroin business because the Sicilians didn’t trust the Cotronis, who were from Calabria in southern Italy, not Sicily.
By the time he moved to Montreal, Nicolo was already a hardened mobster. He was already married to a mob boss’s daughter back in Sicily. Nicolo’s father, another Mafiosi, had moved to New York in 1925 and been killed there in 1933.
Like a good Italian boy, Vito Rizzuto attended St. Pius X, a Catholic high school, while his father and uncle built up the family business. Nicolo wasn’t yet the big boss in Montreal, but he was building up a powerful Mafia crew. By 1974, the crew was so powerful that rumors that Vic the Egg and his right hand man, Palo Violi, wanted to eliminate Nicolo were floating around town. Fearing for his life and hoping to avoid prosecution, Nicolo fled to Venezuela and left Vito in charge.
Vito first attracted police attention in 1978 when Palo Violi, who was the likely successor to Cotroni family boss Vic Cotroni, was rubbed out. The Cotroni family, which was then Montreal’s most powerful criminal group, was made up of immigrants from Calabria in southern Italy. The Cotronis were also closely connected with mob families in Ontario.
Even though the FBI and RCMP both identified Vito as the man who ordered Paolo Violi blown away with a shotgun in 1978, he was never charged with the crime. Three Sicilian immigrants, including Vito’s uncle, Domenico Manno, did plead guilty to the crime.
Nicolo Rizzuto made good use of his sojourn in South America, where he was the guest of the powerful local Mafia family, the Cunteras. During his absence, he set up a drug pipeline that brought Colombian cocaine to Montreal via Venezuela. He also organized a similar network that moved cocaine to Mafia families in Western Europe.
The elimination of the Violis turned Montreal into the Rizzuto family’s playground. With Violi dead, Nicolo activated the connections he had set up. The father and son team quickly turned the Port of Montreal into one of the largest drug importation centers in North America. Their imports included hashish from Pakistan and Lebanon, cocaine from Colombia, and heroin from Sicily and Thailand.
The Rizzutos had organized a sophisticated international smuggling network overseen from Venezuela by Nicolo. Vito called the shots in Montreal, while Nicolo ran the entire organization from South America.
The major customers for the drugs were Mafia families in New York and New Jersey. The Rizzutos even had their own man in New York, Gerlando Sciascia, who kept John Gotti’s crew and other New York mob outfits well-supplied with drugs.
The close relations with New York were both profitable, but dangerous. The huge drug profits to be made in the city led to mob warfare and dragged the Rizzutos into it. Vito and Sciascia got friendly with New York by doing the Bonnano family’s dirty work.
Court testimony indicates that on May 5, 1981, Sciascia invited three mobsters, Alphonse Indelicato, Philip Giaccone and Dominick Trinchera, who were known to be plotting against the Bonnano family leadership, to a “social club” in Brooklyn. When the three entered the club, four men that allegedly included Vito Rizzuto shot them dead with pistols.
The killings put Rizzuto’s associates in charge in New York and left the drug pipeline wide open. The Rizzuto organization was now able to import drugs from all over the world and sell them to dealers in large cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. They also branched out into other kinds of crime.
Law enforcement sources indicate that Vito Rizzuto attempted to smuggle gold into Canada that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the former President and First Lady of the Philippines, had stolen from their country’s treasury. There is also evidence that he was involved in stock scams and a giant counterfeiting operation.
Money laundering was another hugely lucrative racket for the Rizzutos. The RCMP estimated that $91 million in cash moved through one of Rizzuto’s laundries in just four years.
Even though Rizzuto’s activities were well known, the RCMP and local police were unable to make a case against him. Rizzuto was even labeled Canada’s “Teflon Don” by the media, a reference to his flashy American associate, John Gotti. Media accounts indicate that Rizzuto was more Teflon than Gotti; he evaded arrest and prosecution far longer than his counterpart in Queens.
Nicolo wasn’t so lucky; he was arrested for drug trafficking in Venezuela in 1988 and sentenced to eight years in prison. The elder Rizzuto was released in 1993 after serving five years and returned to Montreal.
Part of the reason why Rizzuto got away with it for so long was that the police were busy with other more colorful criminals, namely outlaw biker gangs. The notorious Quebec Biker War was raging and the police had little time for old school mobsters while the outlaws were soaking the streets with blood. Unlike the Rizzutos, the bikers were home grown, and they attracted more attention. The bikers were also far more violent, so the police considered them a bigger menace.
Brought Down by the FBI
Vic Rizzuto’s power in Montreal continued unchecked, even as the FBI was able to demolish the New York Mafia and send many of its leaders, including John Gotti, to prison. It was the downfall of the Bonnano family that eventually ended Vic’s career.
In 2004, FBI informants fingered Vic Rizzuto as the leader of the hit squad that took out Indelicato, Trinchera, and Giaccone in 1981. Vic was arrested, deported to the United States, and tried for the murders. Vic was eventually convicted and imprisoned in Supermax, the toughest federal prison in the U.S., located in Florence, Colo.
The rats who took down Vic Rizzuto may have included Big Joe Massino, who was the boss of the Bonnano family. Massino’s testimony brought down several members of the family, including his successor, “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, in 2005.
Nicolo Rizzuto went down again in 2006 when the RCMP succeeded in hiding cameras and microphones in his favorite hangout, the Consenza Social Club. Rizzuto was among 70 mobsters caught discussing drug trafficking and other crimes on tape. Nicolo, then 84, pleaded guilty to racketeering in September 2008 and received three years’ probation for his involvement. The judge insisted that Nicolo stay under house arrest, but he was allowed to go out for the funeral of his grandson, Vito Rizzuto Jr.
Vic and Nicolo’s removals triggered an all-gang war in Montreal between the Irish gangs, the Hells Angels, various Mafia factions, street gangs, and even Colombian drug cartels. The Rizzuto’s enemies were so emboldened that they took to throwing Molotov cocktails at Italian cafes and other Mafia hangouts around Montreal.
When Vic went to prison, veteran Mafiosi Agostino Cuntera took over the Rizzuto organization. Cuntera was a third-generation Mafia member born in Sicily in 1944. Cuntera was closely connected to many Mafia families by the thickest ties of all, blood. His brothers ran the Venezuelan end of the Colombia to Montreal drug connection. Cuntera also had connections to the powerful Caruana family, which operated one of the world’s most profitable drug trafficking networks.
Like Nicolo Rizzuno, Cuntera was probably sent to Montreal by the Sicilian Mafia to look after its interests in the city. He rose through the ranks and earned the Rizzutos’ loyalty by helping kill Paolo Violi with a shotgun, the act that cleared the way for a Sicilian takeover in Montreal. Cuntera maintained the code of silence and pleaded guilty to the crime to cover for Vic Rizzuto.
During the 1990s, Rizzuto had attracted some attention for his friendship with a local politician named Alfonso Gagliano, who was also a Sicilian and a prominent member of the then powerful Liberal Party. Media articles eventually exposed the relationship.
The growing mob war made Cuntera so nervous that he began riding around in an armored car with a bodyguard. The armored car didn’t do him any good; gunmen simply waited until Cuntera and his bodyguard got out of the car and shot them outside a food supply warehouse on June 30, 2010.
The other casualties of the war included Vito Rizzuto Jr., who was shot in the face in his car on Dec. 28, 2009, Nicolo Rizzuto, who was killed by a sniper in his mansion on Nov. 10, 2010, and Vito’s brother-in-law, Paolo Renda, who was reportedly kidnapped from his house in May 2010. Renda’s body has never been found, so there is a possibility that he might be alive in the Witness Protection Program or in hiding somewhere.
The Rizzutos retaliated for the killings in November 2011 by rubbing out Salvatore “Sal the Iron Worker” Montagna, who was the acting boss of the Bonnano family. Sal, who had been born in Montreal, but raised in Sicily, was reportedly trying to combine the Bonnanos and Rizzutos into one multinational crime family. Sal had been deported to Montreal a year before the killing. Montagna was deported because he was a convicted felon and ineligible to stay in the U.S.
Once back in his birthplace, Sal tried to take over the Rizzuto family’s rackets by killing its members. In true old school Mafia fashion, the Iron Worker’s body was found on the shores of the L’Assomption River with a bullet in it on Nov. 24, 2011. Oddly enough, investigators don’t think the body was dumped; instead, they think Montagna jumped in the river to escape a Rizzuto family hit squad.
Police have arrested several suspects in Montagna’s murder, including Raynald Desjardins, who has been described as Vito Rizzuto’s right-hand man. Two months before Montagna’s death, Desjardins escaped a murder attempt near his home.
Interestingly enough, Vito Rizzuto survived the mob war by serving time in Supermax. He was released from Supermax in October 2012. It remains to be seen if he will try to take control of the Sixth Family and Montreal again.
If he returns to Montreal, Rizzuto may not have long to live. In early November, just a few weeks after Rizzuto walked out of Supermax, Raynald Desjardins’ brother-in–law, Joe DiMaulo, was shot down in his driveway. It isn’t clear who killed Desjardins, but somebody might be trying to finish off the Rizzutos once and for all.
The Cotroni Family – Montreal’s Original Mob The Canadian Mafia, like its American counterpart, is divided into factions from the island of Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy. Although the Sicilians, led by the Rizzutos, are the most powerful Italian crime faction in Canada, they have had many battles with the Calabrians. Interestingly enough, the Calabrians are not technically part of the Mafia; instead, they are historically associated with the Ndrangheta, a rival criminal secret society based in Calabria (La Cosa Nostra Database).
The main Calabrian faction in Montreal is the Cotroni crime family, which was in operation before the Rizzutos left Sicily. Unlike the Rizzutos, the Cotronis concentrated their activities in Canada and attempted to expand to Toronto. Even though they were major drug importers, the Cotronis were also heavily involved with many local rackets, such as gambling, loansharking, protection, and various scams related to political corruption.
The Cotroni family was established by Vic “the Egg” Cotroni, who was born in Calabria in 1911. Vic came to Montreal in 1924 when his parents immigrated to Canada. As his name implies, Vic Cotroni was a colorful character who worked as a professional wrestler before going into organized crime. Among other things, the Egg was once charged with the rape of a woman named Maria Bresciano, but the charges were dropped when Maria married him. Another interesting fact about Vic Cotroni was that he reportedly never learned how to read and write, although it should be noted that Cotroni may have been able to do both in Italian because he lived in that country until he was 13.
The Egg entered the big time through his connection with Bonanno family boss Carmine Galante. In 1953, Galante set up the first heroin connection through Montreal and put the Egg in charge of it. By 1957, the Cotroni family was so powerful that Vic’s younger brother, Frank, represented the family at the Appalachian Conference, a summit meeting of mobsters from all over North America.
The heroin trade and other rackets made Vic Cotroni a very wealthy man. He lived in true Mafia fashion, building a palatial home in the suburb of Lavaltrie that had marble floors, a conference room, a walk-in refrigerator, and a built-in movie theater in the 1960s. Like Al Capone, Cotroni tried to buy respect by donating large amounts of money to local churches.
Something Vic hated was publicity, which he got when the Canadian magazine McLean’s printed an article exposing him as Montreal’s “godfather.” Interestingly enough, Cotroni didn’t have the reporter whacked; instead, he sued McLean’s for $1.25 million. Cotroni won the suit, but the judge reduced the settlement to just $2.
The Egg was finally arrested in 1974 after he and associate Palo Violi were heard threatening to kill Johnny Papalia, the mob boss for Hamilton, Ontario, on a wiretap. All three men were later arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Three years later, Violi and Cotroni were released because Papalia was still alive.
Cotroni eventually died of cancer in 1984 and was the object of an elaborate funeral. The funeral entourage featured 23 cars and a 17-piece brass band.
The Cotroni family’s position in the Montreal underworld had already been taken by the Rizzutos by the time of Vic Cotroni’s death. The Rizzutos were able to cement their power in Montreal because they had eliminated the one Calabrian monster capable of resisting their power grab, Paolo Violi.
Violi was born in Sinopoli, Italy, in 1933, but moved to Hamilton, Ontario with his family in the early 1950s. By 1955, Violi was a hardened criminal who had committed a murder. He beat the rap by claiming self-defense because the man had allegedly pulled a knife on him.
Violi moved to Montreal in the 1960s where he caught the eye of Frank (or Giuseppe) Cotroni, the Egg’s younger brother. Frank asked Violi to take over the counterfeiting and bootlegging rackets. Violi brought his brothers, Francesco and Rocco, in to help him run the rackets. Violi so impressed the Cotronis that he was considered Vic Cotroni’s right-hand man and probable successor.
Violi soon became a victim of the ethnic and regional differences between Sicilian and Calabrian gangsters. The Cotronis’ patrons in New York, the Sicilian-controlled Bonnano family, sided with the rising Rizzuto family in a growing battle for control of Montreal. The Rizzutos were Sicilian, and loyalty to the home island trumped business connections.
On Jan. 22, 1978, Paolo Violi’s face was blown away with a shotgun while playing cards at a Montreal café. He died on the scene, and the Cotroni family’s future died with him. Violi’s brother and henchman, Francesco, was killed by Rizzuto’s gunmen one year earlier. In 1980, the last of the Violi brothers, Rocco, was killed by a sniper while reading the newspaper.
Paolo Violi might have been murdered earlier if it were not for the fact that he was in prison. Violi only managed to live for two more years because he was serving time for threatening Johnny Papalia with Vic the Egg. Violi might have been able to avoid assassination if he had simply left Montreal and stayed away. He did not; he stayed in plain sight.
Three Rizzuto family members eventually pleaded guilty to the murder. Although the man the FBI and RCMP identified as the mastermind behind the killing, Rizzuto boss Vito Rizzuto was never charged.
The Cotroni family survived into the 1980s, but it was a poor shadow of its former self. It was able to operate local rackets, but without support from the Bonannos, it couldn’t control the drug trade. Instead, it concentrated on local crimes and had to deal with challenges from other criminal groups.
Even though they are separate countries with very different histories and governments, the United States and Canada share the same economy. Many businesses operate on both sides of the border, including organized crime.
The Mafia is no exception: Canada’s Italian crime families are as large and as powerful as any in the United States. They also have a reputation for violence and corruption that rivals their counterparts south of the border.
Like the American Mafia, Canada’s mob has historically been centered in urban areas with a large Italian population. In Canada, this means the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the nation’s two largest cities, Toronto and Montreal, both of which are located a short distance from the U.S. border.
The origins of the modern Canadian Mafia can be traced to the 1940s and ’50s and the beginnings of the international drug trade. The increasing demand for heroin coincided with a surge of Italian immigration into Canada. Most of the immigrants were honest and hardworking citizens, but as in the U.S., a small core of hardened gangsters from Sicily and Italy came to the New World in search of opportunity.
Chapter 1: The Montreal Connection – The Mafia in Quebec
The Canadian city most associated with the Mafia is Montreal, which is home to two of Canada’s best known mob families. Montreal has also seen plenty of mob violence, including several bloody gang wars and numerous Mafia hits. Much of this violence stemmed from Montreal’s close proximity to the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S., which made it a natural drug conduit.
The Rizzutos: The Sixth Family
The most famous crime family in Montreal is the Rizzutos, who are closely connected with New York’s Bonanno crime family, one of the legendary Five Families that forms the top level of the American Mafia. Interestingly, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers the Rizzutos a Canadian offshoot of the Bonnanos, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) think the Rizzutos are an independent organization. Some mob scholars have went as far as to label the Rizzutos “the Sixth Family”, which means they have as much influence in the underworld as their New York brethren.
The Rizzuto Family began in February 1954 when Nicolo and Libertina Rizzuto emigrated from poverty-stricken Sicily to Canada. Nicolo and Libertina were looking for a better life in Canada for their eight-year-old son Vito. Nicolo Rizzuto certainly found wealth, power, and success in Canada as the founder and leader of a powerful mob family.
The Rizzutos settled in Montreal, and newspaper reports indicate that Nicolo quickly set himself up as a force to be reckoned with in the local underworld. The Rizzutos were certainly in the right time and the right place; Montreal was a major conduit in the legendary French Connection, the heroin pipeline from the Mediterranean to the American Heartland. There was big money to made moving heroin, particularly for experienced gangsters with connections in Italy and France.
It is highly likely that Nicolo Rizzuto moved to Montreal specifically to engage in the drug trade. He arrived in the city one year after mobsters Vic “the Egg” Cotroni and Carmine Galante, the boss of the Bonnano’s, one of New York’s five mob families, opened a major heroin pipeline through Montreal. Rizzuto and other Sicilian mobsters might have been sent to Montreal to oversee the heroin business because the Sicilians didn’t trust the Cotronis, who were from Calabria in southern Italy, not Sicily.
By the time he moved to Montreal, Nicolo was already a hardened mobster. He was already married to a mob boss’s daughter back in Sicily. Nicolo’s father, another Mafiosi, had moved to New York in 1925 and been killed there in 1933.
Like a good Italian boy, Vito Rizzuto attended St. Pius X, a Catholic high school, while his father and uncle built up the family business. Nicolo wasn’t yet the big boss in Montreal, but he was building up a powerful Mafia crew. By 1974, the crew was so powerful that rumors that Vic the Egg and his right hand man, Palo Violi, wanted to eliminate Nicolo were floating around town. Fearing for his life and hoping to avoid prosecution, Nicolo fled to Venezuela and left Vito in charge.
Vito first attracted police attention in 1978 when Palo Violi, who was the likely successor to Cotroni family boss Vic Cotroni, was rubbed out. The Cotroni family, which was then Montreal’s most powerful criminal group, was made up of immigrants from Calabria in southern Italy. The Cotronis were also closely connected with mob families in Ontario.
Even though the FBI and RCMP both identified Vito as the man who ordered Paolo Violi blown away with a shotgun in 1978, he was never charged with the crime. Three Sicilian immigrants, including Vito’s uncle, Domenico Manno, did plead guilty to the crime.
Nicolo Rizzuto made good use of his sojourn in South America, where he was the guest of the powerful local Mafia family, the Cunteras. During his absence, he set up a drug pipeline that brought Colombian cocaine to Montreal via Venezuela. He also organized a similar network that moved cocaine to Mafia families in Western Europe.
The elimination of the Violis turned Montreal into the Rizzuto family’s playground. With Violi dead, Nicolo activated the connections he had set up. The father and son team quickly turned the Port of Montreal into one of the largest drug importation centers in North America. Their imports included hashish from Pakistan and Lebanon, cocaine from Colombia, and heroin from Sicily and Thailand.
The Rizzutos had organized a sophisticated international smuggling network overseen from Venezuela by Nicolo. Vito called the shots in Montreal, while Nicolo ran the entire organization from South America.
The major customers for the drugs were Mafia families in New York and New Jersey. The Rizzutos even had their own man in New York, Gerlando Sciascia, who kept John Gotti’s crew and other New York mob outfits well-supplied with drugs.
The close relations with New York were both profitable, but dangerous. The huge drug profits to be made in the city led to mob warfare and dragged the Rizzutos into it. Vito and Sciascia got friendly with New York by doing the Bonnano family’s dirty work.
Court testimony indicates that on May 5, 1981, Sciascia invited three mobsters, Alphonse Indelicato, Philip Giaccone and Dominick Trinchera, who were known to be plotting against the Bonnano family leadership, to a “social club” in Brooklyn. When the three entered the club, four men that allegedly included Vito Rizzuto shot them dead with pistols.
The killings put Rizzuto’s associates in charge in New York and left the drug pipeline wide open. The Rizzuto organization was now able to import drugs from all over the world and sell them to dealers in large cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. They also branched out into other kinds of crime.
Law enforcement sources indicate that Vito Rizzuto attempted to smuggle gold into Canada that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the former President and First Lady of the Philippines, had stolen from their country’s treasury. There is also evidence that he was involved in stock scams and a giant counterfeiting operation.
Money laundering was another hugely lucrative racket for the Rizzutos. The RCMP estimated that $91 million in cash moved through one of Rizzuto’s laundries in just four years.
Even though Rizzuto’s activities were well known, the RCMP and local police were unable to make a case against him. Rizzuto was even labeled Canada’s “Teflon Don” by the media, a reference to his flashy American associate, John Gotti. Media accounts indicate that Rizzuto was more Teflon than Gotti; he evaded arrest and prosecution far longer than his counterpart in Queens.
Nicolo wasn’t so lucky; he was arrested for drug trafficking in Venezuela in 1988 and sentenced to eight years in prison. The elder Rizzuto was released in 1993 after serving five years and returned to Montreal.
Part of the reason why Rizzuto got away with it for so long was that the police were busy with other more colorful criminals, namely outlaw biker gangs. The notorious Quebec Biker War was raging and the police had little time for old school mobsters while the outlaws were soaking the streets with blood. Unlike the Rizzutos, the bikers were home grown, and they attracted more attention. The bikers were also far more violent, so the police considered them a bigger menace.
Brought Down by the FBI
Vic Rizzuto’s power in Montreal continued unchecked, even as the FBI was able to demolish the New York Mafia and send many of its leaders, including John Gotti, to prison. It was the downfall of the Bonnano family that eventually ended Vic’s career.
In 2004, FBI informants fingered Vic Rizzuto as the leader of the hit squad that took out Indelicato, Trinchera, and Giaccone in 1981. Vic was arrested, deported to the United States, and tried for the murders. Vic was eventually convicted and imprisoned in Supermax, the toughest federal prison in the U.S., located in Florence, Colo.
The rats who took down Vic Rizzuto may have included Big Joe Massino, who was the boss of the Bonnano family. Massino’s testimony brought down several members of the family, including his successor, “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, in 2005.
Nicolo Rizzuto went down again in 2006 when the RCMP succeeded in hiding cameras and microphones in his favorite hangout, the Consenza Social Club. Rizzuto was among 70 mobsters caught discussing drug trafficking and other crimes on tape. Nicolo, then 84, pleaded guilty to racketeering in September 2008 and received three years’ probation for his involvement. The judge insisted that Nicolo stay under house arrest, but he was allowed to go out for the funeral of his grandson, Vito Rizzuto Jr.
Vic and Nicolo’s removals triggered an all-gang war in Montreal between the Irish gangs, the Hells Angels, various Mafia factions, street gangs, and even Colombian drug cartels. The Rizzuto’s enemies were so emboldened that they took to throwing Molotov cocktails at Italian cafes and other Mafia hangouts around Montreal.
When Vic went to prison, veteran Mafiosi Agostino Cuntera took over the Rizzuto organization. Cuntera was a third-generation Mafia member born in Sicily in 1944. Cuntera was closely connected to many Mafia families by the thickest ties of all, blood. His brothers ran the Venezuelan end of the Colombia to Montreal drug connection. Cuntera also had connections to the powerful Caruana family, which operated one of the world’s most profitable drug trafficking networks.
Like Nicolo Rizzuno, Cuntera was probably sent to Montreal by the Sicilian Mafia to look after its interests in the city. He rose through the ranks and earned the Rizzutos’ loyalty by helping kill Paolo Violi with a shotgun, the act that cleared the way for a Sicilian takeover in Montreal. Cuntera maintained the code of silence and pleaded guilty to the crime to cover for Vic Rizzuto.
During the 1990s, Rizzuto had attracted some attention for his friendship with a local politician named Alfonso Gagliano, who was also a Sicilian and a prominent member of the then powerful Liberal Party. Media articles eventually exposed the relationship.
The growing mob war made Cuntera so nervous that he began riding around in an armored car with a bodyguard. The armored car didn’t do him any good; gunmen simply waited until Cuntera and his bodyguard got out of the car and shot them outside a food supply warehouse on June 30, 2010.
The other casualties of the war included Vito Rizzuto Jr., who was shot in the face in his car on Dec. 28, 2009, Nicolo Rizzuto, who was killed by a sniper in his mansion on Nov. 10, 2010, and Vito’s brother-in-law, Paolo Renda, who was reportedly kidnapped from his house in May 2010. Renda’s body has never been found, so there is a possibility that he might be alive in the Witness Protection Program or in hiding somewhere.
The Rizzutos retaliated for the killings in November 2011 by rubbing out Salvatore “Sal the Iron Worker” Montagna, who was the acting boss of the Bonnano family. Sal, who had been born in Montreal, but raised in Sicily, was reportedly trying to combine the Bonnanos and Rizzutos into one multinational crime family. Sal had been deported to Montreal a year before the killing. Montagna was deported because he was a convicted felon and ineligible to stay in the U.S.
Once back in his birthplace, Sal tried to take over the Rizzuto family’s rackets by killing its members. In true old school Mafia fashion, the Iron Worker’s body was found on the shores of the L’Assomption River with a bullet in it on Nov. 24, 2011. Oddly enough, investigators don’t think the body was dumped; instead, they think Montagna jumped in the river to escape a Rizzuto family hit squad.
Police have arrested several suspects in Montagna’s murder, including Raynald Desjardins, who has been described as Vito Rizzuto’s right-hand man. Two months before Montagna’s death, Desjardins escaped a murder attempt near his home.
Interestingly enough, Vito Rizzuto survived the mob war by serving time in Supermax. He was released from Supermax in October 2012. It remains to be seen if he will try to take control of the Sixth Family and Montreal again.
If he returns to Montreal, Rizzuto may not have long to live. In early November, just a few weeks after Rizzuto walked out of Supermax, Raynald Desjardins’ brother-in–law, Joe DiMaulo, was shot down in his driveway. It isn’t clear who killed Desjardins, but somebody might be trying to finish off the Rizzutos once and for all.
The Cotroni Family – Montreal’s Original Mob The Canadian Mafia, like its American counterpart, is divided into factions from the island of Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy. Although the Sicilians, led by the Rizzutos, are the most powerful Italian crime faction in Canada, they have had many battles with the Calabrians. Interestingly enough, the Calabrians are not technically part of the Mafia; instead, they are historically associated with the Ndrangheta, a rival criminal secret society based in Calabria (La Cosa Nostra Database).
The main Calabrian faction in Montreal is the Cotroni crime family, which was in operation before the Rizzutos left Sicily. Unlike the Rizzutos, the Cotronis concentrated their activities in Canada and attempted to expand to Toronto. Even though they were major drug importers, the Cotronis were also heavily involved with many local rackets, such as gambling, loansharking, protection, and various scams related to political corruption.
The Cotroni family was established by Vic “the Egg” Cotroni, who was born in Calabria in 1911. Vic came to Montreal in 1924 when his parents immigrated to Canada. As his name implies, Vic Cotroni was a colorful character who worked as a professional wrestler before going into organized crime. Among other things, the Egg was once charged with the rape of a woman named Maria Bresciano, but the charges were dropped when Maria married him. Another interesting fact about Vic Cotroni was that he reportedly never learned how to read and write, although it should be noted that Cotroni may have been able to do both in Italian because he lived in that country until he was 13.
The Egg entered the big time through his connection with Bonanno family boss Carmine Galante. In 1953, Galante set up the first heroin connection through Montreal and put the Egg in charge of it. By 1957, the Cotroni family was so powerful that Vic’s younger brother, Frank, represented the family at the Appalachian Conference, a summit meeting of mobsters from all over North America.
The heroin trade and other rackets made Vic Cotroni a very wealthy man. He lived in true Mafia fashion, building a palatial home in the suburb of Lavaltrie that had marble floors, a conference room, a walk-in refrigerator, and a built-in movie theater in the 1960s. Like Al Capone, Cotroni tried to buy respect by donating large amounts of money to local churches.
Something Vic hated was publicity, which he got when the Canadian magazine McLean’s printed an article exposing him as Montreal’s “godfather.” Interestingly enough, Cotroni didn’t have the reporter whacked; instead, he sued McLean’s for $1.25 million. Cotroni won the suit, but the judge reduced the settlement to just $2.
The Egg was finally arrested in 1974 after he and associate Palo Violi were heard threatening to kill Johnny Papalia, the mob boss for Hamilton, Ontario, on a wiretap. All three men were later arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Three years later, Violi and Cotroni were released because Papalia was still alive.
Cotroni eventually died of cancer in 1984 and was the object of an elaborate funeral. The funeral entourage featured 23 cars and a 17-piece brass band.
The Cotroni family’s position in the Montreal underworld had already been taken by the Rizzutos by the time of Vic Cotroni’s death. The Rizzutos were able to cement their power in Montreal because they had eliminated the one Calabrian monster capable of resisting their power grab, Paolo Violi.
Violi was born in Sinopoli, Italy, in 1933, but moved to Hamilton, Ontario with his family in the early 1950s. By 1955, Violi was a hardened criminal who had committed a murder. He beat the rap by claiming self-defense because the man had allegedly pulled a knife on him.
Violi moved to Montreal in the 1960s where he caught the eye of Frank (or Giuseppe) Cotroni, the Egg’s younger brother. Frank asked Violi to take over the counterfeiting and bootlegging rackets. Violi brought his brothers, Francesco and Rocco, in to help him run the rackets. Violi so impressed the Cotronis that he was considered Vic Cotroni’s right-hand man and probable successor.
Violi soon became a victim of the ethnic and regional differences between Sicilian and Calabrian gangsters. The Cotronis’ patrons in New York, the Sicilian-controlled Bonnano family, sided with the rising Rizzuto family in a growing battle for control of Montreal. The Rizzutos were Sicilian, and loyalty to the home island trumped business connections.
On Jan. 22, 1978, Paolo Violi’s face was blown away with a shotgun while playing cards at a Montreal café. He died on the scene, and the Cotroni family’s future died with him. Violi’s brother and henchman, Francesco, was killed by Rizzuto’s gunmen one year earlier. In 1980, the last of the Violi brothers, Rocco, was killed by a sniper while reading the newspaper.
Paolo Violi might have been murdered earlier if it were not for the fact that he was in prison. Violi only managed to live for two more years because he was serving time for threatening Johnny Papalia with Vic the Egg. Violi might have been able to avoid assassination if he had simply left Montreal and stayed away. He did not; he stayed in plain sight.
Three Rizzuto family members eventually pleaded guilty to the murder. Although the man the FBI and RCMP identified as the mastermind behind the killing, Rizzuto boss Vito Rizzuto was never charged.
The Cotroni family survived into the 1980s, but it was a poor shadow of its former self. It was able to operate local rackets, but without support from the Bonannos, it couldn’t control the drug trade. Instead, it concentrated on local crimes and had to deal with challenges from other criminal groups.
