The alleged leaders of the Rizzuto crime family have been arrested in a sweeping police operation that one expert says has “effectively decapitated” what remains of Montreal’s most notorious Mafia clan. Leonardo Rizzuto, 56, and Stefano Sollecito, 57, were among 11 suspects taken into custody on Thursday with another five sought as part of Project Alliance, a three-year investigation into organized crime in Quebec. Rizzuto — the son of the late mob boss Vito Rizzuto — appeared in court by video, where his lawyer entered a not guilty plea. Sollecito, who appeared frail and in a wheelchair, remains in custody. The charges against the men relate to a series of killings between 2011 and 2021. The arrests followed co-ordinated raids by nearly 150 officers across Montreal, Laval, Quebec City and nearby regions. Also detained were Nicola Spagnolo, Davide Barberio and Jean-Richard Larivière, a longtime member of the Hells Angels. Antonio Nicaso, an expert on organized crime and a professor at Queen’s University, called the arrests a serious setback for the Rizzuto network. “It is a devastating blow that effectively decapitates the leadership of the Rizzuto crime family, an organization that for some years now has lost the power it once held in Montreal,” Nicaso told The Gazette. Criminologist Maria Mourani said the operation reflects the importance of the targets. “We see several very important members of the Italian Mafia in Montreal who are being targeted,” she said. “This is good news.” She said it remains to be seen what happens, but the arrests may bring about a possible “slight destabilization” of Montreal’s criminal landscape. “Every time there are police operations, there are individuals who will replace other individuals,” Mourani said. “You can expect that some groups will try to take the dishes.”
An imprisoned
Canadian who claimed he was the second-in-command of a New York Mafia
family has won a new chance for freedom — after arguing he was never
convicted of being a mobster and so he shouldn’t be considered one by
the parole board.
Domenico Violi’s family has been an important part of Mafia history in both Canada and Italy for generations.
His
father was Montreal Mafia boss Paolo Violi, who was killed in 1978 by
members of the rival Rizzuto clan; his mother is the daughter of former
Hamilton, Ont., Mafia chief Giacomo Luppino; and his namesake
grandfather led a Mafia clan back in Italy.
In 2017, police wiretaps caught Violi boasting of making some Mafia history of his own, according to documents filed in court.
Violi,
now 55, was caught in an unusual police probe that featured a “made
member” of a New York City Mafia organization, the Bonanno family,
working as a police informant for both U.S. and Canadian police. Because
the Mafia is a secret society, recording what alleged members privately
said to each other offered a rare, insider’s view of the Mafia on both
sides of the border, prosecutors said.
Paulo Violi – Vic Catroni’s right hand man was expected to take over
the family, He was 46 when he was invited to a card game on Jan. 22,
1978, that turned out to be a set up.
When
the American informant met with Violi in 2017, according to court
documents, Violi told him he had been made “the underboss” of the Mafia
organization based in Buffalo, N.Y. The underboss is the second-highest
position in an American Mafia family.
If true, he would be the
only person in Canada to ever be named to one of the top leadership
positions in any U.S.-based Mafia clan.
“Domenic, you know you
made history,” Violi said the alleged boss of the Buffalo Mafia told him
when Violi was promoted to the position, according to a wiretap
summary.
Violi was arrested at the end of the three-year probe.
At
his trial in 2018, Violi struck a deal, pleading guilty to drug
trafficking and possession of property obtained by crime while criminal
organization charges against him were dropped. His guilty plea meant the
veracity of the wiretaps were never tested in court.
He was sentenced to six years, four months and 21 days in prison.
The
plea also meant Violi was never judicially deemed a mob member, let
alone the underboss of a Mafia family, and that became important this
month when Violi made his case for freedom.
His application for day parole and full parole had been denied in April by the Parole Board of Canada.
At
that parole hearing, the board heard Violi’s application and numerous
letters of support from members of the community of his positive
contribution as a businessman and a philanthropist.
Just
35 minutes into that hearing, however, board members started directly
asking him about his alleged ties to “traditional organized crime,”
which is what Canadian police and justice officials call the Mafia.
The board was told of Violi’s behaviour in prison.
“You
have maintained institutional employment, with excellent work reports,
and participated in voluntary activities including learning new
languages and playing guitar, as well as attending church services
institutionally,” the April decision said. It also cautioned he had been
involved in the purchase of money orders by a known associate of his,
and sent to other inmates, “some of whom are known to be involved in the
institutional drug subculture.”
Police
told the board in April that Violi’s safety, as well as public safety,
“could be at risk due to retaliatory violent occurrences in the
community.”
As
well, the board heard confidential information from police and prison
officials. Prison officials recommended his parole be denied, partly due
to his “ties to organized crime as a key player in an identified crime
family.”
Violi denied being involved in organized crime.
Nonetheless, the parole board in April denied him release.
“It
is the Board’s opinion that any involvement with organized crime will
not result in the protection of society. Therefore, on balance the risk
that you present to the community as a whole is not manageable on either
a day or full parole release,” the April decision said.
Violi complained that the board relied on unproven police information.
He
appealed the decision to the parole board’s appeal division, saying it
was procedurally unfair to ask him questions about being involved in
organized crime because he hasn’t been convicted of gangsterism.
“You
argue that saying someone is involved in organized crime does not
necessarily imply that a person has committed any particular offence and
it certainly does not mean that they are an unmanageable risk of
criminally offending if released,” the appeal decision summarized some
of Violi’s complaint.
When police arrested Domenico Violi and searched his home, they found
an autographed photo of the cast of The Sopranos, the popular Mafia
television series.
In
the appeal decision, written on Sept. 13 but only released Tuesday,
Violi’s complaint was accepted. The appeal division said it was
“problematic” for the board members at the April hearing to question him
on being a mobster for two reasons.
The
first was that while board members can consider information someone may
be a gangster, it is improper to directly demand answers about it
during a hearing, based on past court decisions. The second was that the
board’s written reasons did not explain the concern over organized
crime.
The board failed to reconcile the disconnect between
Violi’s impressive support from the community and good behaviour with
being too risky to release because of an expected return to organized
crime.
The appeal division said Violi’s successful complaint did
not mean there aren’t potential problems with his bid for release, but
that his application would have to face a better analysis at a new
hearing.
Until then, the board’s decision to keep him in prison remains.
The
back of the home in Laval that was broken into faces the Islesmere Golf
Club, a feature that was likely important to Rizzuto who played the
sport frequently. The couple moved into the house during the summer of
2013, just months after he was released from a penitentiary in the U.S.
He had served a 10-year prison term for having taken part in the murders
of three Mafia captains, or capos, who were killed in New York in 1981.
Rizzuto died of cancer on Dec. 23, 2013, just months after the couple
moved into their new home.
When the couple moved, they left a much
larger house on Antoine-Berthelet Ave. in northern Montreal where the
family had lived for decades. The small street came to be known as Mafia
Row because Rizzuto’s father, Nicolo, and his brother-in-law Paolo
Renda resided on either side of him. At least two other associates of
the organization lived on Antoine-Berthelet Ave. as well.
Rizzuto’s
father was killed inside his home on Antoine-Berthelet Ave. before his
son returned in 2012 and Renda was abducted, in 2010, while he just a
short distance from Antoine-Berthelet Ave. Renda has never been seen
since.
A real estate developer known for his ties to the Montreal Mafia was shot dead Thursday morning.
Tony
Magi, who survived a brazen rush-hour murder attempt in 2008, was the
victim of Montreal’s first homicide, a well-placed source confirmed to
The Canadian Press.
Tony Magi on Sept. 22, 2010. Magi was known to police and survived an assassination attempt in 2008.
Police
said they received a call at about 11:15 a.m. that an unconscious man
was lying on the ground at the entry to a garage in west-end Montreal’s
Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood.
Officers who arrived on the
scene found the man suffering from at least one gunshot wound to his
upper body. Witnesses reported hearing several gunshots.
Police say the victim, a man in his 50s, died in hospital. No arrests have been made.
Magi
was well-known to police. In 2008, he was wounded but survived when his
Range Rover was riddled with bullets as he drove to work. He was also
kidnapped in 2005. Both of those crimes are unsolved. His wife’s vehicle
was shot at while she was driving near the family home in 2011. She was
unharmed.
In December 2009, Magi confirmed to the Montreal
Gazette that he was in business with Nick Rizzuto Jr., the son of Mafia
boss Vito Rizzuto. Later that month, the younger Rizzuto was shot dead
outside the offices of Magi’s construction company.
Magi’s name
also came up during Quebec’s public inquiry into corruption in the
province’s construction industry. Wiretaps played at the inquiry
captured Magi discussing a real estate development with Vito Rizzuto in
2004.
Domenico Violi asked the judge for a moment with his family before
being sent to prison for serious drug trafficking; he exchanged hugs and
kisses with his wife and his 20-year-old daughter and high-fives with
his 17-year-old son as supporters who overflowed from the courtroom
variously cried and clapped.
The end of Monday’s hearing was about Violi’s family. It started, however, with family of a different sort.
Violi,
52, was caught in an ambitious police probe that, as officials said at
the time of his arrest, penetrated organized crime at its highest level
and featured a co-operating turncoat mobster becoming a “made member” of
a New York Mafia family.
The probe gathered a treasure trove of
revelations and allegations in recorded conversations, capturing
professed secrets, gossip and internal affairs.
The wiretaps,
although untested in court, suggest a re-evaluation of some of what is
publicly known about the current state of legendary Mafia families in
the U.S., often referred to as La Cosa Nostra.
Violi,
for instance, allegedly claimed on wiretap recordings that he had been
made the Underboss of the Buffalo Mafia, the second-highest position in
American Mafia families. If the claim is true, he would be the only
person in Canada to ever be named to one of the top leadership positions
in any U.S.-based Mafia clan.
It is shocking for several reasons,
not the least of which is that the Buffalo Mafia, although once a
powerful cross-border criminal enterprise, has been moribund for years.
The
conversations suggest a resurrection as well as open lines of
communications between the major American mob families remaining intact
despite fierce law enforcement crackdowns that caused disarray.
And,
according to the documents, the Mafia’s legendary Commission, the
ruling body over all of the main American mob families, may no longer be
a completely mothballed, inactive institution.
*****
“Domenic,
you know you made history,” Violi said the alleged boss of the Buffalo
Mafia family told him in 2017 after Violi was promoted to the position
of Underboss, according to a wiretap summary tendered in court.
Violi asked what he meant.
Nobody
in Canada has ever held such a high position, Violi said he was told,
according to his own recounting caught on an RCMP recording.
It
was such a unique situation that the Buffalo boss had consulted “the
Commission” about it, the conversation continued. The opinion, he said,
was that as long as someone is a member of the Mafia he is entitled to
hold leadership positions within that family.
When police arrested Domenico Violi and searched his home, they found an
autographed photo of the cast of The Sopranos, the popular Mafia
television series.Monday’s hearing focused on Violi accepting responsibility
for trafficking about 260,000 pills that included PCP, MDMA and
methamphetamine; criminal organization charges against him were dropped
as part of the deal.
He was arrested a month later, after his alleged promotion.
Violi
acknowledged through an agreed statement of facts that he met numerous
times with the informant, who was a trusted associate and then official
“made” member of the Bonanno Family. He did not, however, adopt the
Crown’s allegations of far-reaching Mafia involvement.
The
conversations were recorded between 2015 and 2017 and the information
could not be independently corroborated. The informant was not named in
court.
Outside court, Violi’s lawyer, Dean Paquette, said his client did not accept the Crown’s Mafia allegations.
“We
never had an issue about pleading guilty of the drugs. There were other
charges on the information that we would have fought,” Paquette said,
referring to criminal organization charges.
Police seized an array of phones and encrypted BlackBerry devices from Domenico Violi’s home after he was arrested.It was in October 2017, at a meeting in Florida, that Joseph
Todaro Jr., the alleged Buffalo boss, told Violi he had hand-picked
him, according to wiretap transcripts and summaries entered as exhibits
in pre-trial proceedings.
After Violi recounted story to his
friend, the New York mobster leaned in and kissed Violi in a traditional
show of respect, the Crown’s evidence claimed.
He told Violi it was “in his blood.”
Violi was indeed born in the shadow the Mafia.
He
is the eldest son of Paolo Violi, who was the powerful head of the
Montreal mob until his shotgun murder in 1978 by the family of rival
Vito Rizzuto, who then seized the city’s underworld throne. All of
Violi’s uncles on that side of his family were similarly massacred.
Paulo Violi, father of Domenico Violi. He was 46 on Jan. 22, 1978 when
he was murdered at a card game that turned out to be a set up.Violi is also the grandson of the late Giacomo Luppino, who,
from his humble home in Hamilton, was a senior mob authority in Canada
in the 1960s and 70s. Luppino was said to have hacked off the ear of a
rival and carried the leathery flap around with him for years.
It
was Luppino who helped forge an alliance between Hamilton’s mobsters and
the Mafia of Buffalo, which at the time was a powerful entity.
The
Buffalo mob has since fallen on hard times. Old-timers who had run the
group for years were dying of old age or retiring with little sign of
new blood coming in, including Joe Todaro Sr., who was known by the
nickname Lead Pipe Joe and was Joseph Todaro’s father.
The police
evidence gathered during the three-year probe claim the organization was
being resuscitated as the last reputed boss, Leonard "The Calzone"
Falzone, was ailing. He died in 2016.
The reorganization seemed to begin in 2014.
Violi
himself said he was inducted into the Buffalo Family as a “made” member
in January 2015, according to the documents, and around the same time,
Rocco Luppino, Giacomo Luppino’s son, was allegedly named “captain” of
the group’s outpost in Canada; a younger Luppino relative was asked if
he wished to also be “made.”
Violi said he beat out 30 other guys
to become Underboss, the documents claim. All would have to be “made
members” of the Buffalo Family to be considered for the post.
The
mobsters, the documents allege, were clear that Todaro held the reigns
of power within the re-emergent Buffalo organization; the men said that
nobody became a member without going through Todaro first. They said a
mobster in the area was either under Todaro or they needed to pack their
bags and leave.
In keeping with mob tradition, in an attempt to
protect the boss, Violi and the informant sometimes made a hand gesture
instead of speaking Todaro’s name: they would put their fingers to their
mouth as if puffing a cigar or cigarette, the documents allege.
There
was debate, according to the informant’s alleged conversations with
Violi’s younger brother, Giuseppe "Joe or Joey" Violi, on whether he
should be “made” by the Bonanno Family, to which their father belonged,
or by Buffalo.
Giuseppe Violi was arrested in the same police
operation. In June he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to import cocaine,
trafficking cocaine, and trafficking fentanyl and was sentenced to 16
years in prison.
Giuseppe-VioliTodaro, 71, was not charged in the case and does not appear
personally in any of the recordings. He could not be reached for comment
Monday.
Todaro runs a highly successful pizzeria in Buffalo and,
last year, in an article on the demise of the Buffalo Mafia in the
Buffalo News, Todaro is quoted saying he works seven days a week at his
restaurant, just as his father did.
“I’m not going to comment” on
organized crime questions, he said, according to the newspaper, “but if
you want a great recipe for cheese and pepperoni, I’ll tell you.”
Maureen Dempsey, a spokeswoman with the FBI’s Buffalo office, said she could not confirm or deny any of the allegations.
The evidence from the RCMP probe suggests the lines of communication between mob families remains robust.
Soon
after Violi was allegedly made Underboss, according to the documents,
at least three of the families had already been told. Michael "Mikey
Nose" Mancuso, the boss of the Bonanno Family knew, the documents say,
and the Genovese Family and the Colombo Family also had been told.
The
news apparently flowed both ways between New York and Buffalo. After
the informant was “made,” a mobster named John “Porky” Zancocchio had
allegedly told mobsters in Buffalo, the informant told Violi.
Paquette outlined the contributions Violi made to the community through charity and community service.
“He’s
going to pay a price for what he’s done, but that’s not all of who he
is and it would be a mistake to make that judgment,” he said outside
court.
“There is another side of him that people genuinely find
that he’s done good things,” he said noting the large crowd of
supporters.
The courtroom could have been filled twice over by his
supporters — young and old, men and women, entire families with babies —
who waited in the hallway after being refused entry because there were
no more seats.
“It says a lot about Domenic’s larger character.”
They are looking for a four-door vehicle that is either pale grey or pale blue, and police dogs are arriving on scene to search for clues.
In recent years, police sources have told the Montreal Gazette that Ovadia had been observed meeting with alleged Mafia leaders like Stefano Sollecito and Leonardo Rizzuto while both men were under police surveillance. That included a meeting at a restaurant in September 2015 with Sollecito and Marco Campellone, a 24-year-old drug dealer who was involved in a conflict with rival dealers in eastern Montreal. Campellone was killed days after the meeting was held.
Laval police clean up the scene of shooting death of Steve Ovadia, a Laval man with ties to the Montreal Mafia, June 28, 2018.
Ovadia’s name was also mentioned a few times during a bail hearing held for Andrea "Andrew" Scoppa, the alleged leader of a Calabrian clan within the Montreal Mafia, when the latter was arrested for drug trafficking last year. During the bail hearing, held over the course of two days in April 2017, a police investigator testified that Scoppa was secretly recorded on Sept. 15, 2016 as he spoke to an associate and commented on how Ovadia had been arrested that day.
The arrest and search warrants carried out that day were covered by various media and the fact that Ovadia was taken into custody appeared to spook Scoppa. He told his associate that he was considering fleeing Canada because of Ovadia’s arrest.
At the time, Scoppa was being investigated for having distributed kilograms of cocaine to lower-level drug dealers. He was charged in 2017, but for reasons that were never made clear in open court, on May 11 the prosecution suddenly announced it was dropping the case.
Surete du Quebec crime scene investigators inspect the pavement behind a vehicle at the scene of the shooting death of Steve Ovadia, a Laval man with ties to the Montreal Mafia.
Ovadia’s arrest in September 2016 was part of an investigation of a small group of men who were alleged to have been trafficking in cocaine with Scoppa. While Ovadia was not charged in the case, another man who was arrested that day, a 62-year-old Laval resident, was charged with drug trafficking at the Laval courthouse at the same time Scoppa was charged in Montreal in 2017. The man is scheduled to have a trial in August.
Ovadia did not have a criminal record in Quebec, but in 2000, he agreed to follow the conditions set out in a peace bond after having been charged with threatening someone.
The homicide was carried out one day after John Mckenzie, 48, a man with alleged ties to the West End Gang, was shot in Laval. McKenzie survived the attempt on his life.
Last summer, Norman Rosenblum returned to Canada after having been a
fugitive for 18 years. He had skipped out on a sentence he was serving
for having brokered, along with members of the Hells Angels and the
Montreal Mafia, one of the biggest cocaine deals ever investigated in
this country.
He knew he was a wanted man and that Canadian
authorities had been advised he would be arriving in June last year. He
expected to be placed in shackles the second he crossed the border but
no one resembling a police officer was present when he did.
“Instead,
you were welcomed into Canada with no constraints. You started a new
life under your real name receiving welfare while you applied for
government identifications such as a health card,” the Parole Board of
Canada reveals in a written decision it made on Friday to revoke the day
parole it granted to Rosenblum, now 65, back in May 1999.
Rosenblum
managed to live in Canada as a free man for seven months until the
Gatineau police approached him on Jan. 22, while looking for a suspect
who resembled him. When they asked Rosenblum to identify himself, he did
so willingly. It was only then that authorities suddenly realized
Rosenblum was a wanted man for having failed to serve his sentence.
During the early 1990s, the Mounties targeted then-Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto and the Montreal Mafia to
determine how dirty money was being laundered in the city. To do so,
the RCMP opened a fake money exchange counter on Peel St. in downtown
Montreal and posed as money-changers willing to do business without
asking questions. The Hells Angels also entered into the picture and,
eventually, the RCMP was so overwhelmed by criminals wanting to do
business with them they had to limit their focus to the two biggest
criminal organizations in the city.
Rizzuto was never arrested in
the investigation but several high-ranking members of the Montreal Mafia
were, as well as full-patch members of the Hells Angels. When more than
50 people were arrested, near the end of August 1994, a prosecutor
described Rizzuto as the big fish who got away.
“We know that he
is part of the conspiracy, but because of legal principles, we cannot
file this evidence against Mr. Rizzuto,” the prosecutor said back then.
The
probe revealed Rosenblum was involved in a transaction where 558
kilograms of cocaine was to be shipped from Colombia to England, where
Quebec-based Hells Angels planned to distribute it.
News of how
the RCMP conducted the investigation was reported across Canada for
months. In 1995, Rosenblum pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy
to smuggle cocaine and to being in possession of property obtained by
crime. He was sentenced to a 13-year prison term.
Despite having
been a major player in one of the most high-profile investigations the
RCMP ever conducted, Rosenblum returned to Canada last year in complete
obscurity.
The parole board’s decision notes that Correctional
Service of Canada was informed, in June 2017, that Rosenbum was being
deported from a country whose name was redacted from the copy obtained
by the Montreal Gazette.
The document also reveals that the
Canadian government was fully aware of Rosenblum’s whereabouts for
years. While he was living in the other country, Rosenblum was caught
while in possession of cocaine and served a prison term from 2008 to
2017. When Correctional Service Canada recently tried to retrace
Rosenblum’s footsteps, an employee with a Canadian embassy confirmed
that it provided him with consular services while he was behind bars in
the foreign country.
“Reportedly, a series of mistakes by
different government offices allowed you to re-enter the country and
avoid apprehension by the authorities,” the written decision notes.
During
Rosenblum’s parole hearing, held via a video-conference at a
penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, he told the parole board that he
didn’t consider turning himself in when he realized no one was there to
arrest him at the border.
“(On Friday), you mentioned that you
never thought of turning yourself in as you thought you had been given a
second chance,” the author of the summary wrote while also noting that
the board member who presided over his hearing was not convinced. “You
(appeared to be) articulate and clever at the hearing. You ought to have
known that you were still under sentence.”
Rosenblum will have to wait a year before the parole board reviews its decision.\
Giuseppe "Joe" Violi
of Hamilton leaned from the prisoners’ box and kissed his newborn
daughter moments before he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for
fentanyl and cocaine trafficking in Milton court on Friday.
The
infant, born last Sunday, was held up to Violi, 47, by a family member
before Justice R.J. LeDressay entered the Milton courtroom.
Guiseppe "Joe" Violi of Hamilton was sentenced to 16 years in prison for
fentanyl and cocaine trafficking in Milton court on Friday.
The
son of a murdered mob boss, Violi, smiled broadly after he tenderly
kissed his daughter. He wore handcuffs during the brief, emotional
encounter.
Violi, who manages a linen and laundry services
company, was arrested along with eight other alleged organized crime
members in a sweeping investigation into the fentanyl and cocaine trades
across southwestern Ontario and New York.
His older brother Domenico Paolo Violi, 52, was also charged in the case and has not yet come to trial.
LeDressay
was provided with 10 letters of support for Violi’s character,
including one from a priest who said he worked as an art historian from
the Vatican before moving to Canada in 2015.
LeDressay
noted Violi has no convictions since 1999, when he was found guilty of
mischief under $5000, and 1996, when he was convicted of conspiracy to
commit an indictable offence and sentenced to seven years and 10 months
in prison for conspiring to smuggle cocaine.
Tom Andreopoulos,
deputy chief federal prosecutor of the Ontario regional office,
acknowledged that Violi has many powerful letters attesting to his
community involvement but added that Violi is “a career criminal who is
dedicated to and responsible for the unravelling of that very same
community.”
The
three-year RCMP case — called Project Otremens — relied on a police
agent who was inducted into the mob during the investigation.
“The
agent was a trusted associate and then official ‘made’ member of the
New York City based ‘Bonanno’ crime family,” according to the agreed
statement of facts in the case, drafted by Andreopoulos and defence
lawyer Alan Gold.
“During the course of the investigation, one of
the people the Agent dealt with was Giuseppe Violi,” the statement
continued. “Violi was involved in a conspiracy to import cocaine,
trafficking cocaine, and trafficking fentanyl.”
The agreed
statement of facts noted that Violi worked with Massimigliano Carfagna
of Burlington in a cocaine importation scheme to import 200 to 300
kilograms of cocaine into Canada.
“Ultimately, Violi, Carfagna,
and the Agent travelled to Vancouver, British Columbia, and met with an
undercover police officer who represented himself as being an associate
of the Agent, and an experienced cocaine trafficker,” the agreed
statement of facts states.
The agreed statement of facts notes
that Violi and Carfagna sent someone called “Porkchop” to Colombia and
had another contact in Vancouver called “Alex the Greek.”
Much of their communication was done with PGP encrypted messages, the agreed statement of facts states.
The
court document includes a transcript of a March 30, 2017, conversation
between the agent and Violi in which Violi talked of his history in drug
trafficking in the Hamilton area.
“You were dealing with crack too?” the agent said.
“I’m the first one,” Violi said. “I was bringing the liquid in and turning into a powder … crack.”
“A lot of people here were crack heads?” the agent asked.
“Oh, after a year, me bringing … you should have seen the city,” Violi said.
The report notes how the police agent made a payment to Violi by leaving $40,000 in an old BBQ.
Details
of the drug conspiracies contrast sharply with the portrait of Violi
from the support letters, which describe him as a longtime benefactor of
children’s sports and charities in the Hamilton area, as well as a
loving family member.
Paramedic Mario Posteraro of Ancaster
praised Violi for volunteering time and money for the Heart and Stroke
foundation and the Canadian National Autism foundation.
“Joey has never said ‘No’ to any request made of his time,” Posteraro said.
Violi’s wife, Stephanie Violi, described him as the doting father of two boys and two girls, all under four.
“His Chair is empty, and they keep waiting for papa to come home,” she wrote.
She
included a note from his 4-year old daughter, who wrote, “Right now my
papa is at school” and “I want to tell papps that I love you and miss
snuggling.”
Another of the letters of support came from Rev.
Father Francesco Cucchi, who described himself as “former art historian
of St. Peter Basilica in Vatican City, now in the Hamilton Diocese.”
Cucchi said he met with Violi and his family often since arriving in
Hamilton in 2015.
“He was always very funny, and he was so patient to give me some driving lessons with his SUV,” Cucchi wrote.
Violi’s
older sister Nancy Violi wrote that he stayed in the same household as
his widowed mother, even after his marriage in 2013.
Violi’s
father, Paolo Violi, was murdered in 1978 in Montreal during a mob war
with the crime family of the late Vito Rizzuto. Two of Violi’s uncles
were slain during the same conflict in Montreal.
After the arrests
last fall, police said their seeing a recent trend of organized
criminals moving deeper into the opiate trade. Undercover officers
allegedly bought six kilograms of fentanyl and carfentanil in six
transactions in the operation.
Violi is a grandson of the late
Giacomo Luppino of Hamilton, who was considered by police to be a
founding member of the Crimine, a governing body for criminals in the
‘Ndrangheta crime group and a long-standing associate of the Buffalo
mob.
Two men alleged to have been the leaders of the Mafia in Montreal
were acquitted of criminal charges on Monday after a judge ruled the
police illegally wiretapped them in the offices of their lawyer.
Leonardo
Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito were acquitted of charges of gangsterism
and conspiracy to traffic cocaine by Quebec Superior Court Judge Eric
Downs after the judge excluded the wiretap evidence gathered by a joint
police task force in 2015 as a violation of the constitutional right to
solicitor-client privilege. Most of the Crown’s evidence against the
pair came from a conversation that was intercepted in a meeting room and
in the reception area of the law office.
“The judge recognized
that you don’t enter a law office like you do a warehouse” to conduct a
wiretap operation, Daniele Roy, the lawyer representing Sollecito, said
on Monday evening.
The wiretap was a first in Canada because the
police installed hidden microphones around the law office, Roy said. The
judge ruled in favour of Sollecito and Rizzuto’s request to have the
evidence excluded because the authorities had not put in place
sufficient measures to prevent the interception of conversations between
lawyers and other clients at the office, she added.
Sollecito and Rizzuto were arrested in 2015.
Rizzuto,
the son of Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto, who died in 2013, had been detained
since his arrest. Sollecito, whose father, Rocco Sollecito, was
murdered in Laval in 2016, was granted bail by a court in 2016 to so he
could undergo treatment for cancer.
Rizzuto is still facing
charges of possession of a firearm and drug possession. However, he was
expected to be released on bail as early as Monday evening to await the
outcome of the other case.
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