For the second time in less than six months, police in Montreal have
struck hard at the leadership of the Mafia in the city in yet another
investigation that targeted one of its alleged leaders.
Liborio "Pancho" Cuntrera, 47, was in Italy early Wednesday morning
when members of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit set out to
make arrests in the third and final phase of Project Clemenza. The
RCMP-led investigation had to be put on hold in 2011 because the
Mounties uncovered evidence in the murder of Salvatore Montagna, a New
York-based mob boss who tried to wrest control of the Mafia in Montreal
from the Rizzuto organization. Montagna was murdered in a town just east
of Montreal, on Nov. 24, 2011, after a coalition he tried to organize
fell apart.
An RCMP spokesperson told reporters that 15 people were
targeted in Wednesday’s operation and that the investigation probed drug
smuggling and drug trafficking.
The four indictments that were filed reveal Project Clemenza targeted
a group that was loyal to the Rizzuto organization and another group,
formally led by Giuseppe "Ponytail" De Vito who died of cyanide
poisoning in a federal penitentiary in 2013, who opposed theRizzutos.
Cuntrera has long been described by police sources as a potential
young leader in the Rizzuto organization. His father, Agostino, remained
loyal to the Rizzuto organization when it was attacked in 2010 and
2011. That loyalty is widely believed to have cost the elder Cuntrera
his life. He was shot, in June 2010, outside the business he ran in
St-Léonard.
Last year, LCN, the French-language news cable station, aired a
series of reports alleging that Liborio Cuntrera was part of a
six-member committee that had assumed control of the Mafia in Montreal
after Vito Rizzuto — a man who had maintained control over the Mafia in
this city for three decades — died of natural causes in December 2013.
LCN also reported that Rizzuto’s son Leonardo, 46, and Stefano
Sollecito, 48, were part of that committee. The younger Rizzuto and
Sollecito were arrested in November in a drug trafficking investigation
led by the Sûreté du Québec. At a press conference following the
November arrests the SQ alleged both men were leaders in the Mafia.
According to sources familiar with Wednesday’s operation, Cuntrera
had been vacationing in Italy for a while and made contact with the
RCMP on Wednesday. One source said Cuntrera has agreed to turn himself
in to the RCMP when he returns to Canada. The RCMP arrested 13 of 15
people Wednesday. One is still being sought and Cuntrera is in Italy.
Charges reflect a lengthy delay
The charges filed against the 47-year-old Laval resident on Wednesday
reflect the lengthy delay the RCMP had to deal with in Project
Clemenza. One charge alleges he trafficked in cocaine on May 17, 2011.
Another two allege that he and Marco Pizzi, 46, of Montreal North,
trafficked in cocaine and conspired to do the same between Sept. 28 and
Oct. 6, 2011.
A different indictment appears to involve some of the people who
sided with De Vito in the failed attempt to overtake the Rizzuto
organization. Giuseppe "Closure" Colapelle, 38, a man who was killed in
2012, is named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the indictment as is
Alessandro Succapane, a man who was revealed to be a close associate of
De Vito’s during a previous RCMP investigation.
Ten people named in that indictment are alleged to have been part of a
conspiracy to import and traffic in cocaine between Feb. 18 and Dec.
21, 2011.
“The network imported cocaine through the United States and used its
contacts in the commercial ground transport industry,” RCMP spokesperson
Corporal Camille Habel said Wednesday. “The investigation demonstrated
that this (network) transported large quantities of cocaine. The
American and Canadian authorities have seized more than 220 kilos of
cocaine and placed their hands on (more than $2 million).”
One man alleged to be part of the group of 10 named in the indictment
is Martino Caputo, a 42-year-old man who is currently serving a 12-year
prison term in Kingston, Ont. for his role in a cocaine smuggling
conspiracy to bring tons of the narcotic into Canada. Caputo also faces
charges in Ontario related to a murder carried out in that province back
in 2012.
Only a dozen of the people named in the four indictments appeared
before a judge at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday. Federal
prosecutor Marc Cigana said the Crown objected to seven of them being
released without first having a bail hearing. Below are descriptions of a
few of the seven who remain detained:
• Erasmo Crivello, 36, a drug trafficker with known ties to the
Rizzuto organization. In February 2004, Crivello was sentenced to a
three-year prison term for holding three people against their will and
aggravated assault. According to decisions made by the Parole Board of
Canada, Crivello hired a group of men to collect $60,000 that he
believed was stolen from him. Three men were held against their will and
beaten while Crivello watched and gave orders. One of the victims
suffered injuries that required surgery.
Hansley Lee Joseph in 2007
• Hansley Joseph, 36, a well-known member of a Montreal street gang
who received a two-year prison term for his role in a drug trafficking
network that operated in northern Montreal. The case brought against
Joseph and about two dozen other men in 2005 was significant because it
represented one of the first times in Canada that gangsterism charges
were laid against street gang members. According to a court decision
made in the case in 2007, Joseph was part of a group known as the “Dope
Squad” and frequently supplied cocaine to a group of drug dealers who
terrorized Pelletier Ave. a street north of Henri Bourassa Blvd. in
Montreal North.
• Frank Iaconetti, 48, has served time for a previous conspiracy to
smuggle cocaine into Canada. In 1999, he pleaded guilty in a U.S.
District Court in Massachusetts to being part of a conspiracy to
distribute the narcotic. According to court documents filed in that
case, on March 15, 1998 Iaconetti brought $250,000 in cash to undercover
agents for what was supposed to be a down payment for 100 kilograms of
cocaine destined for Canada. When he was sentenced in 1999, a judge was
told there was very little evidence that Iaconetti knew much about the
actual drug transaction. At the time, Iaconetti said he agreed to
deliver the money to cover debts he accumulated because of a serious
addiction to gambling that also prompted him to request that he be
banned from the Montreal casino.
Mobsters in southern Ontario are on the run or in hiding out of fear a
war with Montreal foes will lead to more murders, a police source says.
“They
(Ontario mobsters) know there are going to be a couple more murders,”
the source told the Toronto Sun. “It’s quite an interesting time.
“It’s a chess game,” he added. ”Everybody’s waiting for the Valentine Day’s Massacre, but I don’t see it.”
Making
themselves scarce are members of a Mafia and ‘Ndrangheta co-operative –
with Toronto links – that attempted to take out the powerful Rizzuto
family in Montreal.
Disputes within the co-operative ended in
deadly violence, allowing reputed Mob boss Vito Rizzuto to muscle his
way back into power his release from prison, Mob experts say.
As a
result, the source said, police investigators expect there will be more
murders in the GTA area of specific ‘Ndrangheta members as the Montreal
Mob works to strengthen its grip in southern Ontario.
The signs
of Rizzuto’s ascension resonanted throughout southern Ontario with the
July 2013 assassination of Greater Toronto Area Mob hitman Salvatore
“Sam” Calautti outside a Woodbridge banquet hall.
Police believe
Calautti’s slaying was another surgical strike against ‘Ndrangheta clans
in the GTA, southern Ontario and Mafia members in Quebec who challenged
Rizzuto.
Calautti, suspected by police in five Mob-related
murders, including the sniper slaying of Rizzuto’s father, was close to
members of the ‘Ndrangheta’s ruling board the Camera di Controlo.
Rizzuto’s
father, notorious crime boss Nicolo Rizzuto Sr., was gunned down in his
kitchen in November 2010. Calautti was one of two suspects in the case
and also the prime suspect in the murder of Vito Rizzuto’s Ontario
strongman Gaetano “Guy” Panepinto in 2000. He was never charged in
either case.
“It was significant and profound,” a police source said of Calautti’s murder. “It affects everybody.”
Calautti’s murder showed “it doesn’t matter who you are,” he said.
Whether
a hitman or the boss, the murder “brought people into line. They know
there are going to be a couple more murders” in Ontario.
The
police source said some southern Ontario Calabrian mobsters haven’t been
seen for a while and are believed to have gone into hiding, knowing
they could be among the next targets.
It’s also true “there are people lurking in the bushes” waiting for an opportunity to strike against Rizzuto, he added.
The
attempt to oust Rizzuto by a co-operative of Quebec and Ontario
mobsters — including leader Salvatore “Bambino Boss” Montagna — that
began in 2009 has apparently failed.
The co-operative fizzled in
part because of an internal squabble that led to Montagna’s murder and
charges against six people in his shooting death.
That fallout, and other key murders, helped put Rizzuto back in charge, sources said.
“Yes,
he’s back in power,” said Mob expert and author Antonio Nicaso. “I
think, to understand what happened in the past, we have to consider
Montagna was a challenger of Rizzuto.
“Everything starts when
Montagna came to Canada” in 2009 after he agreed to leave the United
States before deportation proceedings were launched, Nicaso said.
Rizzuto
at the time was in a Colorado jail, serving a sentence for his role in
the 1981 murders of three Bonanno crime family members.
Nicaso
said the people who targeted Rizzuto turned on themselves and
neutralized any attempt to dethrone him. Montagna tried but failed to
kill Raynard Desjardins, who was among the six charged in Montagna’s
2011 slaying.
Despite that, Rizzuto remains a target.
He
has regained much of the power his family lost since returning home last
year from Colorado. While in prison, his kingdom was threatened.
Assassins
killed Rizzuto’s son, Nicolo, in 2009 and his dad Nicolo Sr. a year
later. Rizzuto’s brother-in-law, Paolo Renda, vanished in 2010 and is
presumed dead. Police believe the hits were, in part, vendettas for the
murders of the brothers Violi – Francesco in 1977, Paolo in 1978 and
Rocco in 1980 in a violent power grab by Nicolo Sr.
The tide has since turned in Rizzuto’s favour.
“Rizzuto
is back, but I believe the criminal landscape is totally different in
Montreal, because he lost many people, many relatives, and it’s not the
same as it used to be,” said Nicaso. “For the first time, he suffered
some losses.
“I think, with him, vengeance is on his mind,” said a police source. “He wants the life he had back.
“The sooner he regains his role and eliminates his opponents ... he knows they’re out to get him.”
The
source said Rizzuto was protective of his son and father and the loss
of both has been difficult for him to bear. While vengeance may be a
driving force, the source stressed it’s also about money, power and
control.
“There has to be order, there have to be messages,” the source said. “With each murder, it sends a message; it’s symbolic.
“But what’s the message? Murder is part of the business of the Mob,” he said.
“The
rhetoric is the same,” the source explained. “One side wants Vito
Rizzuto to go and the other side wants some of the Calabrian leadership
to go.”
Nicaso, meanwhile, said Rizzuto continues to have “strong contacts in Ontario.
“Rizzuto
is definitely too strong, and too charismatic,” Nicaso said. “If you
have to deal with Rizzuto, you are dealing with a giant.”
Rizzuto has money and since his return, numerous mobsters returned to the fold, he said.
“His main goal is revenge,” Nicaso added.
Rizzuto’s
return has been complicated by the Charbonneau Commission in Quebec
delving into corruption into the construction industry. It has raised
concerns about infiltration into Ontario.
“That’s the power,”
Nicaso said. “If we (only) consider the mafia as a violent organization,
then we miss the entire picture. The mafia is about power; it is about
relationships with politicians.”
For years, businesses have been paying “pizzo” (slang for protection payments or street tax) to the Mob, the police source said.
If pizzo payments continue — and cash from the construction industry has dried up — what is the source of the money?
“There
are many things a lot of people haven’t considered,” the source said.
“What other industries are paying the pizzo? No one is asking that. No
one asks about the other industries.
“Think like him,” the police source challenged.
********
MOB WARS: THE DEATH TOLL RISES
Nicolo Rizzuto Sr.
The
patriarch of the Montreal crime family was murdered in 2010 by a
sniper’s bullet as he sat down to eat with his family. The killing was
eerily similar to the 1980 murder of Rocco Violi who was also killed by a
sniper’s bullet at his dinner table. With Violi out of the way, Rizzuto
Sr. took over the crime family’s power. He was born into the Mafia in
Cattolica Eraclea, Sicily. His father, Vito, was murdered in New York
City in 1933. At Nicolo’s funeral in Montreal, his killers left a
message for the Rizzuto clan, indicating it was a vendetta slaying.
Nicolo Rizzuto Jr.
The
son of Montreal Mob boss, Vito, was shot and killed on Dec. 28, 2009.
His bullet-riddled body was left near his parked car in Montreal’s NDG
district. It was a precise hit as the killers waited for him to emerge
from an address. He had taken control of his father Vito’s operations
after Vito was imprisoned.
Paolo Renda
The married father
of two was the family’s consigliere and was third on the power chart,
behind brother-in-law Vito and father-in-law Nicolo. The 73-year-old’s
SUV was found abandoned near his home shortly after he mysteriously
disappeared in May 2010. Renda, who was on probation at the time, was
heading home after playing golf and buying steaks for a family meal. His
family appeared before a Superior Court judge in Montreal earlier this
year seeking an order declaring the missing man dead.
Agostino Cuntrera
He
was in charge of the day-to-day operations while Vito Rizzuto was in a
Colorado jail. He was killed in June 2010 during a daylight shootout in
front of his food supply business in Montreal. Police had warned him
that he was a target. Cuntrera had enlisted drug trafficker Liborio
Sciascia to be his driver and bodyguard. Sciascia was also killed during
the shootout. Cuntrera was sentenced in the 1970s to five years jail
for conspiring to kill mobster Paolo Violi.
Salvatore Montagna
The
Montreal-born Mob boss of the Bonanno crime family agreed to leave New
York City in 2009 before American authorities began deportation
proceedings. Shortly after arriving in Canada, the assault on the
Rizzuto family began. There was a co-operative effort by Mafia and
‘Ndrangheta clans in Ontario and mafia members in Quebec, including
Montagna, “to pick up the pieces of a leaderless crime family (but) it
couldn’t work together,” said a police source. Montagna was murdered in
2011. Six people were charged in the slaying, including Raynald
Desjardins, who was believed to be part of a group challenging Rizzuto.
Salvatore Calautti
A
Mob enforcer prolific in inflicting pain and committing murder, he was
shot to death as he sat in his car in Vaughan in July 2013. Many in the
Mob world described him as being “a hot head.” Police believe he was
involved in the murders of Gaetano Panepinto, a Rizzuto strongman in
Ontario, and Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. Police believe Panepinto was killed in
retaliation for the murders of two of Calautti’s close friends and
associates, Domenic Napoli and Antonio Oppedisano. Both Napoli and
Oppedisano were muscling in on Panepinto’s illegal gaming machine
business. It’s believed the two were murdered in the basement of
Panepinto’s casket shop on St. Clair Ave. W. Their bodies have never
been found.
A man considered by police to be an influential member of a Mafia clan has been sentenced to a three-year prison term for walking around with a pistol during a turbulent time in the city's underworld.
Nicola Di Marco, 41, of St. Léonard, was arrested last summer, when several people tied to the Rizzuto organization were on alert following the kidnapping of Paolo Renda in May and the killing of Agostino Cuntrera in June.
Both men were considered to be leaders in the Rizzuto clan and, according to police, a possible internal conflict within the Mafia might have been behind the killing of Cuntrera and the disappearance of Renda, who is still missing.
After Cuntrera's death, Montreal police followed up on information provided to them about people associated with the Mob who were suspected of carrying firearms illegally.
Within that context, Di Marco was arrested on July 14 as he left a tanning salon on Jean Talon St. in St. Léonard.
An informant told the Montreal police that Di Marco regularly walked around with a firearm hidden in a duffel bag, according to a decision by Quebec Court Judge Jean-François Buffoni, which had been placed under a publication ban that was lifted on Thursday.
Di Marco was arrested as he exited the salon carrying a duffel bag that matched the informant's description. Nothing illegal was found inside, but the police then searched his Corvette. A 9-mm pistol was found under a carpet, along with a loading clip and ammunition.
Di Marco contested the legality of the search, alleging it was a violation of his rights, but lost.
While hearing arguments on that motion, Buffoni was told that Montreal police believe Di Marco is "an influential member of one of the clans" involved in the conflict.
In December, he pleaded guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm as well as six other related offences.
On Thursday, at the Montreal courthouse, Buffoni agreed with a joint recommendation, made by defence lawyer Gary Martin and prosecutor Thierry Nadon, that Di Marco serve the minimum three-year prison term for illegally possessing the pistol.
The reputed mobster appeared calm as he surrendered himself to a special constable who ushered him into a prisoner's dock in the courtroom following Buffoni's sentence.
Di Marco's legal troubles are not over. On June 20, he is expected to be sentenced in a case related to Project Colisée, the lengthy investigation into the Mafia in Montreal and its associates.
Di Marco has admitted to taking part in running a casino inside a building on Jean Talon St. E. in St. Léonard.
For a moment, as the sound of Ave Maria accompanied by a single trumpet filled the air and sunlight illuminated the church’s spectacular fresco, beauty emerged during Monday’s funeral for mob boss Nicolo Rizzuto.
But reminders of the ugliness that characterized Mr. Rizzuto’s life and death were inescapable, in the presence of hulking bodyguards prepared to evict interlopers and in the sight of the stooped widow who last week found her husband dying from a gunshot wound inside their home.
More than 500 mourners filled the pews of the historic Madonna Della Difesa church in Montreal’s Little Italy neighbourhood, paying their final respects to the 86-year-old Italian immigrant who built what was once Canada’s most powerful criminal organization.
In a Roman Catholic funeral mass celebrated entirely in Italian, the violence that has become inseparable from the Rizzuto name in Montreal was not mentioned. Nor was Mr. Rizzuto praised, as there was no eulogy from friends or family. Instead, Msgr. Igino Incantalupo’s words about the deceased differed little from what would have been said following the death of any other elderly community member.
Family members, including his widow Libertina and his grandchildren, accompanied Mr. Rizzuto’s gold-coloured casket into the church. Noticeably absent was his son, Vito Rizzuto, who is serving a 10-year racketeering sentence in the United States for his participation in the murders of three Mafia members in Brooklyn in 1981.
There was a conspicuous private security presence inside the church, and just before the service began, security guards were joined by Rizzuto associates to evict crime writer James Dubro.
Mr. Dubro said he was inside the church for about 30 minutes until a bodyguard asked him who he was.
“I’m just here because I’m curious — a lot of my life has been documenting organized crime and Nick Rizzuto is a very unique figure in all this. It’s a part of history,” Mr. Dubro said.
“It’s fascinating. It makes the least sense to kill an 86-year-old man who is frail and has no real power and is under house arrest [because he was on probation at the time], unless it was to send a very powerful message to Vito [Rizzuto] to say ‘you’re fini’.”
This was the second funeral for a murdered Rizzuto in less than a year at the 90-year-old Madonna Della Difesa church, which has been designated a national historic site because of its design. A funeral for Nick Rizzuto Jr., Vito’s son and Nicolo’s grandson, was celebrated there in January after he was shot dead on a west-end street.
The service featured music that ranged from mournful to soaring, with a choir accompanied by organ, strings and brass. Sunlight filled the church, illuminating the fresco that blends religious imagery with more modern portraits, including Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on horseback.
Most mourners leaving the church declined comment, and those who stopped to talk to reporters had nothing negative to say about Mr. Rizzuto. An accountant named Alberto Pizzi said he knew the Rizzutos because Montreal’s Italian community is tight-knit. “For me, he wasn’t a criminal,” he said. “He was normal. We knew each other, we respected each other.”
Mr. Rizzuto pleaded guilty in 2008 to gangsterism and was on probation at the time of his killing. He served five years prison in Venezuela on cocaine possession charges in the 1980s, but despite the many gangland slayings believed to be the work of his organization over the years, he was never charged with murder.
Francesco Bennici, 71, said he befriended Mr. Rizzuto about 40 years ago when they realized they were from the same province in Sicily, Agrigento. He said he last saw Nicolo Rizzuto at the grandson’s funeral in January, and he never thought his friend would meet the same fate. “I don’t expect anybody to end like this,” he said.
It was just before 6 p.m. last Wednesday when a gunman hiding in a wooded area behind Mr. Rizzuto’s house shot him through his window as he sat at his kitchen table. It was the fourth murder or kidnapping to rock the Rizzuto organization in the space of a year. It followed the murder of Nick Rizzuto Jr., considered a Rizzuto family street boss, the February kidnapping and presumed murder of Paolo Renda, Nicolo’s son-in-law, and the killing in June of Agostino Cuntrera, believed to be the organization’s interim boss.
Before the service, Montreal police had to deal with a suspicious package left on the church doorstep. Police said the small black box with a white cross contained a note. Const. Daniel Lacoursière said the note will be analyzed, but he would not disclose the note’s contents. http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Mourners+pack+church+Rizzuto+funeral/3830822/story.html#ixzz15P2pyKX2
The head of the once-powerful Rizzuto crime family was likely cut down by a single bullet from a professional hitman as he prepared dinner with his wife and daughter nearby.
A lone bullet hole through a glass wall at the rear of Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto’s luxury home leads investigators to believe that the gunman waited in a stand of trees for the right moment to get a clear shot at the 86-year-old kingpin at suppertime on Wednesday.
"The impact of the bullet was able to pierce two windows to hit Mr. Rizzuto,” Cmdr. Denis Mainville, head of Montreal’s organized crime squad, told QMI Agency on Thursday.
He said the high-profile murder has all the hallmarks of an assassination.
“These were targeted acts,” said the commander. “Now, were they targeted acts from within organized crime or even within factions? We are studying different links, different situations and different information.”
Mafia analysts and a police informant tell QMI Agency that the killing was likely ordered by rival mobsters trying to finish off the crumbling Rizzuto clan, which has been rocked by 12 months of killings and disappearances.
Rizzuto and his grandson and namesake, Nick Rizzuto Jr., have both been killed, leaving jailed son Vito as the only remaining leader of a family that has controlled Canada’s mob scene ever since the murder of gangster Paolo Violi in 1978.
If the Sicilian Rizzutos are in fact on the way out, say experts, it clears the way for Calabrian mobsters in the Toronto area to take over traditional rackets of gambling, loansharking and drug trafficking.
Italian anti-Mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told Toronto journalists last month that the powerful network known as the 'ndrangheta is based in Italy’s southern Calabria region and has a major presence in Canada’s largest city. The 'ndrangheta are Europe’s main cocaine traffickers as well as master money-launderers, said Gratteri. A recent bust in Italy nabbed 350 people and wiretaps had repeatedly picked up references to Canada.
Montreal criminologist and Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani says the 'ndrangheta could very well be behind the purge of the Rizzutos.
"The information I have is that it's the Ontario Calabrese who are trying to resume control in Montreal,” said Mourani, who has written extensively on organized crime.
“It’s very, very complicated in Montreal. The market and even Italian clans are in the process of restructuring.”
That restructuring has taken on a scorched-earth dynamic. Aside from Nick Rizzuto and his grandson, top leader Agostino Cuntrera has also been eliminated, and family consigliere Paolo Renda was kidnapped in May and hasn’t been seen since.
Undercover police agent Alex Caine, who has infiltrated dangerous gangs including the Hells Angels, tells QMI Agency that the Rizzutos’ enemies might be worried that someone turned informant during a big 2006 mafia roundup.
“Somebody from way high up turned and maybe said too much and they're not sure which one it was,” said Caine, who has worked with police for 30 years. “Somebody, somewhere, talked. There has to have been a singing canary ... when in doubt, take 'em out.” The rise and fall of Nick Rizzuto
Nicolo Rizzuto’s mafia career ended the same way as that of Paolo Violi, the reputed godfather whom he replaced in the 1970s.
Rizzuto was born in 1924 in the Italian village of Catolica Eraclea, in southern Sicily. He had grand ambitions when he arrived in Halifax in 1954 at the age of 30, accompanied by his family.
He made his way to Montreal and met with the city’s reigning mafia don, Vic Cotroni. But Rizzuto’s ambition irked Cotroni’s New York masters, the Bonanno family. With a price on his head, Rizzuto fled to Venezuela for several years and became friends with the Caruana-Cuntrera clan, Sicilians just like him.
Rizzuto returned to Montreal in the 1990s and waged war with Violi. The Calabrian boss’ murder in 1978 cleared the way for the illiterate but intelligent Rizzuto to rise up Canada’s criminal hierarchy.
The Rizzutos soon controlled loansharking, money laundering and drug rackets.
A recent book on the mafia said the organization forces hundreds of Montreal businesses to pay them protection money. But his smarts couldn’t protect him from Project Coliseum, a huge 2006 anti-mafia bust orchestrated by Quebec provincial police. Rizzuto was among 73 people nabbed in the roundup, the first of a series of setbacks for the family.
In 2007, it was son Vito’s turn to face justice, this time in the United States. Vito is serving a 10-year sentence for racketeering related to his role in the murders of three New York mobsters in 1981.
Nick Rizzuto’s grandson, Nick Jr., 42, was seen as a favourite to take over the family but he was killed with six shots to the chest in west-end Montreal in December 2009.
The National Post reports that Italian police have confiscated millions of dollars of art, jewels, antiques, real estate and luxury cars from Beniamino Gioiello Zappia, 71, known as "Don Tito," who is currently imprisoned in Italy. "Don Tito," was the long-time financier for the Rizzuto Crime Family of Montreal. Mr Zappia was also linked to the Bonanno Crime family of New York and the Caruana-Cuntrera Clan of Venezuela.
