Sam Fasulo, 37, died Sunday after being shot several times while he was driving in a sports utility vehicle in Montreal North on Friday afternoon.

No arrests have been made in the shooting and investigators are trying to track down a pale coloured sports utility vehicle that is believed to have been used in the homicide. Several shots were fired into Fasulo’s Jeep.

Montreal police Constable Laurent Gingras said investigators have little in terms of a description of a white man who witnesses saw inside the suspect vehicle before it sped away.

Fasulo only recently finished serving a four-year sentence he received in 2004 for his leading role in a major drug trafficking ring that sold crack cocaine and heroin out of Italian cafés in St. Leonard and St. Michel.

When police carried out search warrants in the 2003 operation dubbed Project Espresso they seized a large quantity of drugs but also uncovered a cache of weapons that included automatic and semi-automatic firearms.

According to National Parole Board decision prepared when he was granted a full release in 2005, Fasulo was considered the leader of the highly organized drug trafficking ring that brought in $100,000 a week. The Montreal police had evidence it had operated quietly for years. It was busted after residents who lived near the cafés began complaining that the drugs sold out of the cafés brought problems like prostitution and used syringes to their neighbourhoods.

One of the parole decisions notes “(A) police report also indicates a tie to traditional Italian organized crime, which (Fasulo denied).”

Despite the denial, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation Project Colisée uncovered links Fasulo had with Francesco Arcadi, the mob boss with the Rizzuto Clan.

In 2002, Arcadi was recorded giving orders to Fasulo to resolve a problem after a drug dealer with ties to the mob was roughed up inside a Montreal bar.

Arcadi was recorded telling Fasulo to go immediately to the bar but to not start punching right away. Instead, Fasulo was told, their adversary should only get a warning.

“You tell him: ” Don’t you touch this fellow or I will slit your throat like a goat,” Arcadi told Fasulo.

Subsequent wiretapped conversations suggested Fasulo solved Arcadi’s problem in under an hour.

Arcadi, 55, is currently serving a 15-year prison term he received in October after pleading guilty to conspiracy and gangsterism charges filed against him in Project Colisée.

Latest homicide victim had ties to local Mafia: police – By Paul Cherry, The Gazette – January 20, 2009 – This story was found at: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Latest+homicide+victim+ties+local+Mafia+police/1198607/story.html

An American man claiming the Mafia and the CIA are conspiring to silence him — just as they killed his father and grandfather — was denied refugee protection in Canada because he could not prove the conspiracy in court.

The complicated tale of Michael Ellero, 44, of Phoenix, is told in some 700 pages of self-penned prose, a treatise he claims documents his work for the U. S. Department of Justice, payments by the Mafia to relatives of Hillary Clinton, and a nefarious campaign to destroy him after reporting office misdeeds to his boss — including the involvement of a lawyer in the death of a colleague.

He claims the CIA used psychological tricks against him and the FBI was investigating his mysterious uncle, who had multiple identities.

“My grandfather was killed, my father was killed, and [then] I learned that there was an attempt against me,” Mr. Ellero wrote in documents presented in the Federal Court of Canada, seeking emergency permission to stay in Canada.

Family members were coerced to co-operate with the Mafia, his phone calls were intercepted, documents were stolen from his bedroom and his job applications were inexplicably ignored, he said.

He did not get a chance to make his full case, however, because of another alleged conspiracy, this one by Canadian officials, he claimed: He was not permitted to enter his treatise into evidence and portions of the audio recording of his refugee hearing were erased.

Further, he is indignant that a Canadian immigration official suggested he might have a mental problem.

Mr. Ellero came to Canada in 2005 and a month later made a claim for refugee protection.

“Allegedly, his opponents are fearful that the book he has written will be published in due course, thereby exposing the corruption ‘in the federal government and elsewhere in the United States,’ ” Justice Michel Shore wrote in his 17-page ruling. “[He] claims he did not seek state protection from the U. S. authorities because he believes that the police cannot provide physical protection for him against ‘the evil and perils of the world.’ ”

The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) rejected his claim two years ago because he was found not to be credible. He appealed to the Federal Court to overturn that decision but was denied; he then made an unsuccessful motion for that decision to be reconsidered.

He next claimed that returning him to the United States would place his life in danger. Officials found “no substantial grounds to believe” such a fate awaited him. Mr. Ellero once again took his case to the Federal Court, asking that his pending deportation be halted.

After a hearing in Ottawa last month at which Mr. Ellero represented himself, Judge Shore denied his appeal. “An applicant’s subjective fear of returning to his/her country does not constitute irreparable harm. Objective evidence of harm related to danger must be demonstrated,” he ruled. “The applicant has not shown that he would be subject to a serious likelihood of jeopardy to his life, liberty or security as a result of the removal.”

On Dec. 19,Mr. Ellero was turned over to U. S. officials south of Ottawa. He was inspected by U. S. border guards and released, said Kevin Cosaro, a spokesman for U. S. Customs and Border Protection.

Giovanna Gatti, a spokeswoman for the IRB, declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Ellero’s complaints, but said the Federal Court is the appropriate venue for anyone disputing the handling of their case.

Mr. Ellero could not be reached for comment.

Court rejects U. S. man’s fears of CIA, Mafia – Adrian Humphreys, National Post – Published: Saturday, January 17, 2009 – http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1187142

Despite his stunning admission that he was a “man of honour” in the Sicilian Mafia while he conspired to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into Canada, Gerlando Caruana of Montreal has been turned down for full parole.

During a parole hearing held Friday morning at the Federal Training Centre in Laval, Caruana, 65, finally acknowledged that he and his younger brother Alfonso were part of the Sicilian Mafia, a extremely rare admission among those who are part of the secretive society that originated in Italy and, over the past century, carried over to countries like Canada and the U.S.

His decision to be more transparent with the National Parole Board comes after Caruana was turned down for full parole in April, when he denied being part of the Mafia.

This time around, during a frank exchange with parole board members Gilles Roussel and Pierre Cadieux, Caruana even admitted to being a so-called “man of honour,” or leader in the organization, while he, his brothers and other relatives, known as the Caruana-Cuntrera clan, shipped large quantities of cocaine around the world.

“To be a man of honour means to be respected and to respect. When you give your word, that is it. It is final,” Caruana said, adding his organization was destroyed after project Omerta, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation, arrested him and several others in 1998. His brother Alfonso and other relatives, former Montrealers from the Cuntrera side of the clan, are currently serving lengthy prison terms in Italy.

Previous admissions like Caruana’s have typically come from Mafia members who turned police informant.

Despite his openness, Caruana was turned down for full parole on the 31-year prison term he is currently serving. In 1995, he was out on full parole, while serving a 20-year term for heroin smuggling, when he and his brothers Alfonso and Pasquale made plans to bring tons of cocaine into Canada. Gerlando’s role was to distribute it in Montreal.

All three brothers received lengthy prison terms and Gerlando has been out on day parole for 19 months now. His parole officer, Julie Dubois, told the board that Caruana leads a very isolated life, restricted to his work at a centre that distributes food for needy people in St. Jérôme, part of his day parole, and his family. Caruana walks with a cane. His movements are limited by diabetes and a right hip that he damaged while behind bars at a penitentiary in Ontario. He said he now regrets being behind bars when all three of his children married and all five of his grandchildren were born.

Caruana claims to lead a frugal life, living partly off his pension with his spouse in a small house in Laval. For years, police have speculated that Caruana still has a fortune in drug profits stashed away somewhere. Before the arrests in 1998, members of the Caruana-Cuntrera organization were believed to have hidden millions in drug money through real estate purchases in countries like Aruba and Venezuela.

Caruana claimed that all his assets were lost when his partner in crime, Oreste Pagano, became an informant for the police.

“Everything disappeared,” Caruana said while claiming Pagano controlled the profits made from their transactions.

But while explaining the decision to keep Caruana under much closer surveillance than he would have experienced on full parole, Roussel said the parole board remains skeptical about his finances. Roussel also noted the length of Caruana’s sentence justifies a long period of day parole.

The board is required to hear Caruana’s case again in six months. His sentence ends in 2018.

Mafia ‘man of honour’ denied full parole – By Paul CherryDecember 19, 2008 4:01 PM – The Montreal Gazette – This story was found at: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Mafia+honour+denied+full+parole/1096717/story.html

MONTREAL – Nicolo Rizzuto sat through his sentencing hearing yesterday with the patient look of a man who knew he would be sleeping in his own bed for the first time in nearly two years.

The 84-year-old Mafia boss leaned forward in his chair in the prisoner’s dock of the Montreal courthouse and stared at his hands as Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin accepted a carefully arranged plea deal that was months in the making.

Despite being named as a leader of a criminal organization that bears his surname and described by the RCMP as “one of the pinnacles of organized crime in this country,” Rizzuto was given no more jail time but, rather, three years of probation for accepting large wads of suspicious cash at his headquarters while he and other leaders in the Montreal Mafia were investigated over four years.

Rizzuto pleaded guilty to being in possession of the proceeds of crime and a related gangsterism charge in a deal that allowed him to sidestep more serious charges of drug trafficking and extortion.

The charges against Rizzuto and some 90 others were filed in 2006 at the conclusion of Project Colisee, a huge police operation probing the most powerful Mafia organization in Canada.

Rizzuto received the lightest sentence of the six named leaders, in part because of his age and failing health, said prosecutor Yvan Poulin. The nearly two years that Rizzuto spent behind bars awaiting the outcome of his case was also a factor.

Defence lawyer Loris Cavaliere produced letters from doctors attesting to a respiratory problem Rizzuto has with his left lung and another ailment that required surgery last year.

“Sentences areimposedbased on the evidence that is gathered, not on somebody’s reputation,” Mr. Poulin said, defending the sentence outside court.

“In this case, Mr. Rizzuto– I know he’s reputed as [being] the boss of the Mafia in Montreal — but the evidence that was gathered by the RCMP during the four years of the investigation didn’t show that.”

Mr. Poulin added that not being able to prove the origins of cash Rizzuto was caught handling 76 times on cameras that were hidden in the Club Social Consenza was an obstacle in negotiating a tougher sentence.

Mr. Cavaliere said he expected his client would be leaving the Montreal Detention Centre last night.

Rizzuto is the father of Vito Rizzuto, 62, named as the “Godfather” of the Montreal Mafia. The younger Rizzuto is serving a 10-year sentence in the United States for the 1981 murders of three New York City mobsters.

During Project Colisee, police gathered evidence that Nicolo Rizzuto and three of the other five men who were sentenced yesterday ran the organization as a committee in his son’s absence.

They had the “moral authority” over “an organization that is commonly referred to as the Mafia,” Mr. Poulin said.

Rizzuto’s son-in-law, Paolo Renda, 69, was sentenced to the equivalent of a six-year sentence on the same two charges as Rizzuto, with additional weapons offences for guns found at his home. He has only two years left to serve and will likely be eligible for parole early next year.

Rocco Sollecito, 60, was sentenced to the equivalent of an eight-year prison term and has four years left.

Two other men — Francesco Arcadi, 55, and Francesco Del Balso, 38 — were sentenced to the equivalent of a 15-year prison term. With the time they have already spent behind bars factored in, they have 11 years left. Justice Bonin ordered that they serve at least half of that before they are eligible for parole.

The sentencing drew criticism for being desperately weak.

“The police officers working on the case did more time than Nick Rizzuto — and he’s making better money. The jail time should be at least as long as the investigation,” said Lee Lamothe, co-author of The Sixth Family, the biography of the Rizzuto clan.

“This was probably the best chance we’ve had — and may ever have — to actually take out the heart of a Mafia Family. They had the weapon, but the prosecutors took the easy way out. The Crown was holding four aces and betting like he had nothing,” he said.

“This tells the Mafia that they have little to fear from the Canadian justice system.”

Mr. Lamothe said the rules of the Mafia require underlings to accept longer sentences in order to protect the boss, likely accounting for discrepencies in the final plea arrangement.

As part of the deal, the government confiscated more than $2.8-million in cash seized during raids in 2006. Del Balso also consented to the confiscation of cash and assets worth more than $800,000.

Sentencing for a sixth defendant, Lorenzo Giordano, 45, was put off until Nov. 25, because he did not agree on what property the government would confiscate as part of the plea.

Ailing Mafia boss walks free – Canwest News Service, with files from National Post – Published: Friday, October 17, 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=886403

The octogenarian mob boss leaned forward in his chair in the prisoner’s dock of the Montreal courthouse Thursday and stared at his hands as Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin essentially rubber-stamped a decision made months ago, according to several sources.

Despite being described as a leader of the criminal organization referenced by his family name, Rizzuto was left with only three years probation to serve for accepting large wads of cash, suspected of being tribute, at his headquarters, the Consenza Social Club, while he and other leaders in the Montreal Mafia were investigated for four years.

As part of a plea bargain, Rizzuto managed to sidestep the more serious charges filed against him in Project Colisee including drug trafficking and extortion.

Two other men sentenced Thursday – Francesco Del Balso, 38, and Francesco Arcadi, 55 – were each sentenced to the equivalent of a 15-year prison term.

With the time they have already spent behind bars factored in they have 11 years left to serve.

Judge Bonin ordered that they serve at least half of that before they are eligible for parole.

Rizzuto, 84, received the lightest sentencing recommendation of the six reputed leaders, in part because of his age and health problems, said prosecutor Yvan Poulin.

Defence lawyer Loris Cavaliere produced letters from doctors attesting to a respiratory problem Rizzuto has with his left lung and another ailment that required surgery last year, while Rizzuto was in custody.

“Sentences are imposed based on the evidence that is gathered, not on somebody’s reputation,” Mr. Poulin said while defending the sentence outside the courtroom.

“Here, in this case Mr. Rizzuto – I know he’s reputed as [being] the boss of the Mafia in Montreal – but the evidence that was gathered by the RCMP during the four years of the investigation didn’t show that.”

Mr. Poulin added that not being able to prove the origins of cash Rizzuto was caught handling 76 times on cameras hidden in the former social club was an obstacle in negotiating a tougher sentence.

Mr. Cavaliere said he expected his client would be able to leave the Montreal Detention Centre Thursday night.

The nearly two years Rizzuto spent behind bars awaiting the outcome of his case was factored into his sentence. Last month, he pleaded guilty to being in possession of the proceeds of crime and a related gangsterism charge.

He is the father of Vito Rizzuto, 62, a man referred to often as the “Godfather” of the Montreal Mafia. The younger Rizzuto is currently serving a 10-year sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1981 murders of three New York mobsters.

During Project Colisee, the police gathered evidence that Nicolo Rizzuto and three of the other five men sentenced Thursday ran the organization as a committee in his son’s absence.

They had the “moral authority” over “an organization that is commonly referred to as the Mafia,” Mr. Poulin said.

Leonardo Rizzuto, 39, and his sister Bettina Rizzuto, both lawyers, were in attendance at the Montreal courthouse for their grandfather’s sentencing. They sat with their aunt, Maria Rizzuto, who watched as her husband, Paolo Renda, 69, was sentenced to the equivalent of a six-year sentence. Renda pleaded guilty to the same two charges as Rizzuto did last month in addition to three weapons offences for firearms seized from his home. He has only two years left to serve and will likely be eligible for parole early next year.

Rocco Sollecito, 60, an associate of the Rizzuto organization was sentenced to the equivalent of an eight-year prison term and has four years left to serve.

He pleaded guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to commit extortion, bookmaking, illegal gaming as well as being in possession of the proceeds of crime.

Del Balso, Arcadi and Lorenzo Giordano, 45, received the stiffer sentence recommendations of 15 years because of their involvement in crimes like drug trafficking, cocaine smuggling and exporting marijuana.

As part of the plea bargain the Crown confiscated more than $2.8 million in cash seized when arrests and search warrants were carried out in November 2006.

Del Balso also consented to the confiscation of cash and assets worth more than $800,000.

Giordano’s sentencing was put off until Nov. 25 because he couldn’t come to an agreement on what the government can confiscate.

Montreal’s reputed Mafia don to walk free Thursday – Canwest News Service – Montreal Gazette – Published: Thursday, October 16, 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=885216

MONTREAL — Flanked by his most trusted associates, Nicolo Rizzuto shuffled into court wearing an elderly man’s grey cardigan instead of his trademark fedora and overcoat.

The 84-year-old great-grandfather, who started a sophisticated family empire with international reach that has brought in tens of millions of dollars, nodded from behind security glass as his lawyer registered a guilty plea on his behalf.

Before landing in jail, where his dark brown hair has faded to grey, Mr. Rizzuto kept busy with daily meetings with his subordinates, listening, counselling, giving orders and settling disputes.

Then he would accept offers of thick wads of cash that he would hide in his socks.

Mr. Rizzuto and five others who pleaded guilty yesterday are described in court documents as the top leaders of the dominant Mafia family in Eastern Canada.

The gang’s headquarters was the Consenza Social Club, a north-end Montreal café where Mr. Rizzuto and his captains held court.

They didn’t know that for four years, the RCMP had hidden cameras and microphones inside the café, recording Mr. Rizzuto’s pivotal behind-the-scenes presence.

Mr. Rizzuto and his captains enjoyed a quasi-feudal loyalty from their underlings.

Lorenzo Giordano, 45, once hit another car with his new Ferrari Maranello and fled the scene. An underling, Mike Lapolla, went to police and took the blame for the hit-and-run.

Traffickers working for the syndicate had to pay “taxes” – kickbacks – to the Rizzuto organization. One drug smuggler was heard on a wiretap saying he paid $3-million in kickbacks for his importations.

On one occasion, law-enforcement officials seized 218 kilograms of cocaine hidden in false compartments in two aircraft luggage containers. The news created a storm within the organization because it was nearly 100 kilograms more than the bosses were expecting.

After what the RCMP affidavits call “an internal investigation,” the gang allowed one culprit to keep working, but he was stripped of his earnings on the next deal.

During the investigation, RCMP officers broke into the vacated home of the parents of one drug trafficker and found $2.9-million in cash. The police seized the money and made it look like it was stolen.

According to RCMP wiretaps, the enraged trafficker thought his brother-in-law had stolen the money and went looking for him. Montreal police stopped his car and seized a handgun.

In wiretaps, other mobsters call Mr. Rizzuto “the Old Man” or “Zio Cola.” (Zio is Italian for uncle).

Mr. Rizzuto’s son, Vito, has been described in court documents as the top Mafia leader in Canada and is serving a 10-year sentence in the United States for racketeering.

The elder Mr. Rizzuto came to Canada in 1954 from the Sicilian town of Cattolica Eraclea. By 1975, he was identified in a public inquiry as a lieutenant of the Cotronis, the family of Calabrian origin that controlled Montreal’s Mafia.

During a power struggle in the late 1970s, Mr. Rizzuto was forced into exile in Venezuela until mobsters of Sicilian origin affiliated with the Rizzutos began to hold sway over their Calabrian rivals.

While in Venezuela, Mr. Rizzuto was jailed for cocaine possession. He returned to Canada in 1993.

The ‘Old Man’ of Canadian Mafia hangs up fedora, socks of cash – TU THANH HA AND LES PERREAUX – September 19, 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080919.MAFIANICKRIZZUTO19/TPStory/National

MONTREAL — Talk about protecting your assets.
Members of the Montreal Mafia displayed little tolerance for money-losing investments, according to a summary of the Project Colisée investigation and other evidence presented during a bail hearing for Nicolo Rizzuto and Francesco Del Balso in August 2007.

The disclosures shed new light on a bloody assault three years ago on John Xanthoudakis, founder of Norshield Financial Group. They also reveal the circumstances surrounding the 2005 suicide of another Montreal financier.

On the morning of Nov. 25, 2005, wiretaps recorded telephone conversations between Del Balso, 37, described by investigators as one of the younger leaders in the Montreal Mafia, and a man named Vincent Casola, described in a court summary as Xanthoudakis’s former partner.

The two men went over details of a meeting Del Balso wanted to set up with Xanthoudakis at a law office on the 21st floor of Place Ville Marie.

In another call overheard by the RCMP that same day, Cosimo Chimienti, an associate of Del Balso, was recorded telling Del Balso he had $300,000 invested with Xanthoudakis and wanted it all back.

In other conversations recorded weeks later, it became apparent Del Balso was dispatched by senior Mafia leaders to collect $5 million in all.

The Nov. 25 conversations came days after a report filed in Ontario Superior Court outlined bleak prospects for investors seeking to recover cash invested in Norshield’s Olympus United funds.

Norshield’s financial problems had started years earlier, when animation firm Cinar Corp. sued to recover more than $120 million invested in offshore securities. (A report submitted by receiver RSM Richter Inc. last year alleged there is evidence Norshield was engaged in several “breaches of Ontario securities law.” Xanthoudakis and his partners have been ordered to appear at a formal OSC hearing in October to answer allegations of filing false asset values.)

While Cinar and other investors in Norshield, who stand to lose $400 million, are left to wait for securities regulators and courts to sort out the mess, Del Balso and other Mafia leaders decided to take a more direct approach.

Del Balso and Lorenzo Giordano, another man described as a young leader in the Montreal Mafia, met with Xanthoudakis that afternoon. They were accompanied by a third man named Carlos Narvaez Orellana. All three were captured on a security camera as they got off an elevator and headed to the law office at Place Ville Marie.

What transpired during the meeting was described afterward in chilling detail as Del Balso talked to Chimienti and Casola over his wiretapped cellphone.

After Xanthoudakis refused to pay them, Del Balso and Giordano watched while Narvaez gave the financial executive a severe beating.

While Del Balso was driving away from Place Ville Marie, he spoke to Chimienti on his cellphone. The calls were played during Nicolo Rizzuto’s bail hearing last year.

Del Balso said Xanthoudakis “was pissing blood” after the beating. Chimienti wanted to know how the meeting ended. Del Balso replied that if Xanthoudakis didn’t get the message by now, he didn’t know what else to do.

Two minutes later, Del Balso and Casola discussed what happened over their cellphones.

“He’s f—–g bleeding all kinds over there on the boardroom floor,” Casola said while Del Balso chuckled.

Casola also told Del Balso that Xanthoudakis insisted he was broke because Norshield’s assets were frozen.

Judging by the questions Casola asked Del Balso, he wasn’t a witness to the beating although he was at Place Ville Marie that day.

In December 2005, the RCMP recorded other conversations that revealed Del Balso was ultimately seeking $5 million for a group of people who had invested funds with Norshield. Del Balso had been advised to convince Xanthoudakis into securing a loan using a property worth more than $5 million that belonged to someone Xanthoudakis knew. The loan was to be used either to pay back the people for whom Del Balso was collecting or to create a new investment.

The issue reached the highest levels of the Montreal Mafia that month. On Dec. 22, hidden microphones at the Consenza Social Club, the Mafia’s former headquarters in St. Léonard, recorded a conversation between Del Balso and Rocco Sollecito, one of the four senior leaders of the organization. They discussed putting a $5-million lien on the property and how any financing from it would be handled by business associates less known to the police.

Del Balso was growing impatient with Xanthoudakis, who had insisted on showing him he could pass a lie detector test to prove he did not steal money invested in Norshield.

During a conversation with Sollecito, Del Balso said he told Xanthoudakis he’d use the polygraph wires to strangle him. Sollecito and Del Balso appeared confident they could settle the issue involving the $5-million lien that day.

Sollecito is overheard on the tapes asking a man named Antonio Rossi to talk Xanthoudakis into settling with them that day. At the time, Rossi owned Vehitech, a South Shore company that equipped police vehicles with equipment. Vehitech has since been replaced at its Boucherville location by another company that outfits emergency vehicles with equipment. A representative from the new company said recently that Rossi no longer works there and was unable to provide a number where he could be reached.

Norshield owned shares in Vehitech before the investment scandal broke. (According to current federal and provincial incorporation records, Vehitech is now part of a numbered holding company. Xanthoudakis is listed as its vice-president and Rossi as its president.)

Despite knowing Rossi through Vehitech, Xanthoudakis didn’t agree with Sollecito and Del Balso’s proposal.

On Feb. 28, 2006, Rossi was recorded on a wiretap informing Del Balso that the Montreal police had opened an investigation into the assault at Place Ville Marie. On March 8, Del Balso was arrested along with Giordano and Narvaez. They were released on a promise to appear in court on a later date.

A little more than a week later, on March 16, a conversation recorded at the Consenza Social Club indicated the organization’s leaders, including Vito Rizzuto’s father, Nicolo, and Francesco Arcadi, 53, were putting more pressure on Del Balso to collect money from Xanthoudakis. But because he was already facing a criminal charge for the assault, Del Balso appeared hesitant. He told Paolo Renda, Vito Rizzuto’s brother-in-law: “I wanna take care of it, but it’s just -”

“Yes, but not this way, I’m sorry,” Renda replied, adding later: “You have to tell me yes or no.”

The next day, Del Balso received more bad news. The Gazette had published a report on the three arrests made in the assault on Xanthoudakis. Because the trio hadn’t been formally accused, their names were not included in the report. When Del Balso heard the news, he looked up the article on the Internet and read it out loud to Giordano, who laughed.

“Thank God they didn’t put our names,” Del Balso said afterward.

“Thank God for real, bro,” Giordano replied in apparent relief that the beating hadn’t yet drawn attention to the senior leaders in the Mafia.

A few days later, Xanthoudakis withdrew his complaint.

In April 2006, Del Balso and Rossi were recorded discussing the $5-million property again, but the summary does not indicate whether any transaction was actually made to get money back for the people for whom Del Balso was collecting.

Included in the same court summary is another case where Mafia members used similar methods to recover money invested through Magdi Garas Samaan, a financial expert who lived in Rivière des Prairies and had convinced several people he could earn them 30 per cent on investments in just six months.

On Nov. 29, 2005, Samaan tried to kill himself, which caused a great deal of concern for Del Balso. During the same period he was chasing Xanthoudakis for money, wiretapped conversations indicated Del Balso was desperately trying to recover huge sums from Samaan after being warned he was a scam artist.

In Del Balso’s eyes, the suicide attempt only confirmed his suspicions.

Three weeks after his suicide attempt, on Dec. 20, 2005, Samaan checked in to a room at the Motel Florence in Brossard. The motel’s owners found his body on Christmas Day. The owner was unable to open the door to the room because it had been locked from the inside.

The Longueuil police were called in to break down the door. According to the coroner’s report on Samaan’s death, an empty bottle of extra-strength Aspirin was found near his body. Samaan left no suicide note.

The death was ruled a suicide by overdose by the provincial coroner’s office. In the five days between Samaan checking in to the motel and his body being found, Del Balso was overheard making hasty arrangements to have Samaan’s spouse and stepdaughter sign over ownership of his luxury house on Gouin Blvd. and two other properties Samaan owned.

The arrangements for the house, which Del Balso wanted to take control of through Malts Financing, a company the RCMP suspects was used as a front to launder money through transactions like mortgage loans. It was created in 2001 by one of Del Balso’s associates who is facing drug-trafficking charges in Project Colisée.

The house is now owned by a Montreal businessman whose brother was often recorded attending meetings at the Consenza Social Club where he discussed financial matters with senior leaders of the Mafia.

According to land registry records, the house went through a series of transactions before it was sold for more than $1 million in April to the Montreal businessman by Malts Financing.

Financiers felt Mafia’s wrath – Paul Cherry – Montreal Gazette – Thursday, September 18, 2008 -This story was found at: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=e86f25ab-8e63-46b3-805c-d2078d58926c

MONTREAL — Nicolo Rizzuto will learn next month whether he will walk free despite having admitted for the first time in court that he is part of a criminal organization.

Rizzuto, 84, the father of Vito Rizzuto, 62, the reputed head of the Montreal Mafia, pleaded guilty Thursday to possession of the proceeds of crime as well as possession of the proceeds of crime for the benefit of, the direction of, or in association with a criminal organization.

Nicolo Rizzuto and five other men alleged to be leaders in the Montreal Mafia appeared before Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin at the Gouin courthouse Thursday to enter guilty pleas to charges stemming from a three-year investigation into the organization.

Rizzuto’s gangsterism conviction carries a maximum 14-year sentence.

But some sources familiar with the plea bargaining process that produced Thursday’s guilty pleas have said a joint recommendation will be made that would see him leave a detention centre the day he is sentenced. The sources have said Rizzuto’s sentencing recommendation will be limited to the time he has already served behind bars, almost the equivalent of four years, plus probation.

Crown prosecutor Yvan Poulin would not comment on what sentencing recommendations will be made next month. “We discussed the case and we arrived at an agreement,” he said.

“You will know what the agreement is on Oct. 16. According to us, it serves the interest of justice, the interests of the public and it avoids a quite lengthy and costly trial,” Poulin said.

Dressed in a pale cardigan sweater that made him look very much like the great-grandfather he is, Rizzuto nodded yesterday when Bonin asked if he agreed to plead guilty to the two counts.

It marked the first time the octogenarian Rizzuto has been convicted of a crime in Canada since the organization that bears his name reputedly took control of the Montreal Mafia about three decades ago.

But Rizzuto managed to sidestep some of the more serious charges to which four of the other reputed leaders in the Montreal Mafia pleaded guilty at the Gouin courthouse yesterday.

Rizzuto has been behind bars since Nov. 22, 2006, when arrests were made in Project Colisée, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation that started in 2003. More than 80 people were arrested in the investigation, but Rizzuto and the five others were singled out as leaders.

Rizzuto’s son-in-law, Paolo Renda, 69, pleaded guilty to the same two charges yesterday as the older man, as well as to three weapons offences related to firearms seized from his luxury home on Antoine Berthelet Ave.

During the investigation, Rizzuto and Renda were revealed to have operated as part of a four-man committee whose members made key decisions about the organization’s activities.

Francesco Arcadi, 54, and Rocco Sollecito 60, were the other two members of the committee. They pleaded guilty to all-

encompassing conspiracy and gangsterism charges.

“It was a group that, as the indictment points out, was involved in a multitude of crimes. We’re talking about importing cocaine, cocaine trafficking, extortion, gaming houses and bookmaking,” Poulin said.

Francesco Del Balso, 38, and Lorenzo Giordano, 45, both described as young leaders in the organization, pleaded guilty to even broader conspiracy charges that include extortion.

Del Balso also pleaded guilty to filing false income tax returns between 2003 and 2006, a period where he pretended to work at a grocery store while living the high life of a millionaire.

He also pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking, a charge that stemmed from Project Ziplock, a 2003 police investigation into a member of the Hells Angels. When suspects were rounded up in Project Ziplock early in 2004, Del Balso consulted a lawyer to try to find out why he wasn’t among those arrested. He did not know he was targeted in a much broader investigation.

“They controlled the members of the organization on their territory. They also controlled a well-established territory that included Rivière des Prairies and St. Léonard,” Marc Fortin, an RCMP investigator and member of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said during Rizzuto’s bail hearing in August 2007.

Fortin quickly added that their activities weren’t limited to eastern Montreal.

“We heard them use the terms ‘the Italians’ and ‘the Family.’ Very rarely the term ‘Mafia’ would come out, but it did … sometimes,” Fortin said when asked how the members referred to themselves.

To further the argument that the Rizzuto organization operated much like a Sicilian Mafia family, the prosecution was prepared to bring in an expert witness from Italy, Brigadier-General Angelilo Pellegrini, who analyzed evidence gathered in Project Colisée.

During Rizzuto’s bail hearing in 2007, prosecutor Alexandre Dalmau said that with Pellegrini’s testimony, the Crown was prepared to “establish or make parallels to methods of operating that were similar with the criminal organization here in Montreal.”

“He is prepared to describe those criminal organizations in Italy, define what a man of honour is to these organizations, describe the activities of a Mafia family, the role of a boss and to testify about a certain type of vocabulary they use,” Dalmau said. “The same terms were used by the organization in Montreal.”

Rizzuto is widely believed to have orchestrated the shift in power in the late 1970s that saw the Rizzuto organization take control of an existing Mafia organization run by mob boss Vic Cotroni, who died of cancer in 1984.

Despite this, Rizzuto’s only conviction since then was for cocaine possession in Venezuela in 1988. By the time he returned home to Montreal in 1993, his son Vito was considered by police to be the head of the organization. Vito Rizzuto is serving a 10-year sentence in the United States for participating in the 1981 murders of three New York mobsters.

When Fortin testified in 2007, he described an organization that is still very much involved in the same rackets the Cotroni family controlled in Montreal from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Fortin said they provided protection to certain Montreal-area bars and offered their services as persuasive debt collectors to even legitimate businesses.

Fortin said Project Colisée certainly struck at the heart of the organization. But he also offered a caution, saying:

“It was dismantled in part, but it’s certain it still exists.”

Rizzuto might soon walk free – Paul Cherry – The Gazette – Thursday, September 18, 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=d82d5710-d7e8-4720-9a70-e327fab39934

Kissing and telling is bad form in any culture, but nowhere more so than in the Sicilian Mafia.

The kissing in Il Divo – which won the Jury Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and makes its North American premiere today at the Toronto International Film Festival – is of the manly, on-the-cheeks variety. It’s between Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore (Totò, The Beast) Riina and seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti.

The teller is Baldassare (Balduccio) Di Maggio, who worked as a driver for Riina and hid out in Toronto under an assumed name in the early 1990s, while on the run from fellow assassins.

During his fugitive GTA days, Di Maggio could sometimes be found playing pool on College St. in Toronto, where he once encountered Antonio Nicaso, an internationally recognized expert on organized crime who has written several books on the Mafia and lectured police forces on the Sicilian underworld.

“He’s not a good pool player,” says Nicaso, who interviewed Andreotti several times for a book he wrote on allegations Andreotti was too tight with the Mafia.

After leaving Toronto, Di Maggio turned on his old Mafia associates. That’s when he told authorities of the alleged “kiss of respect,” which he said took place in September 1987 in Palermo, in the home of a political associate, who was later murdered.

Andreotti’s now a senator for life and Nicaso interviewed him several times between December 1994 and March 1995 for his book Lo e La Mafia; le verita de Giulio Andreotti (The Mafia and Myself; the truth according to Giulio Andreotti), which was an Italian bestseller.

During those interviews, Andreotti categorically denied Di Maggio’s account of the “kiss of respect,” which is featured prominently in Il Divo. It didn’t help Di Maggio’s credibility that he committed a murder while in the witness protection program.

It’s also worth noting that Di Maggio didn’t actually accuse Andreotti of being in the Mafia, although the Mafia clearly favoured Andreotti’s Christian Democratic Party.

Di Maggio told authorities that Riina “personally told me more than once that it is not possible for a politician, at any level, to become a man of honour. … On the basis of this rule, which was expressed to me in categorical terms, there is a substantial contempt on the part of Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia) toward politicians, who are not regarded as serious enough to become part of the organization.”

Nicaso notes that Di Maggio isn’t the only former Torontonian depicted in Il Divo. There are also shorter portrayals of Tomasso Buscetta, who enjoyed College St. in the late 1960s while on the run, and Salvatore Ferraro, the reputed No. 2 man in the Sicilian Mafia, who lived in a semi-detached bungalow on Burtonwood Cres. in Etobicoke in the early 1990s.

In part because of Di Maggio’s accusations, Andreotti was charged with improper ties to the underworld, including playing a role in the killing of a journalist who accused him of having Mafia ties. Andreotti was initially acquitted, but then convicted on appeal. His conviction was annulled and Nicaso notes he benefited from the country’s statute of limitations, rather than a definitive ruling on his innocence.

In his interviews, Nicaso found Andreotti to be wrapped in contradictions and ambiguity. While he embodied power, he somehow also seemed fragile and gentle, like lace that could be used as a garrotte.

“He cultivated his ambiguity consciously,” Nicaso recalls.

“He has a fantastic memory. If 40 years ago he told you a lie, he’d be able to continue to tell that lie to you, if you met again. It’s very difficult to catch him off guard.”

At one point, Nicaso tried asking a question for a second time, in a different form, a couple of weeks after the first attempt.

“You’ve already asked me that,” Andreotti chided him.

As depicted in Il Divo, Nicaso found Andreotti coped with severe stresses through irony, not temper.

Among other things, Andreotti has said that madmen either claim to be Napoleon or boast that they can bring order to Italy’s rail service.

In Il Divo, Italian actor Toni Servillo plays Andreotti as a cartoonish figure worthy of Peter Sellers, and Nicaso notes that filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino was producing a satire and a work of art, not a factual record.

“Movies should transfer emotion, not information,” Nicaso notes. “Otherwise, you’d do a documentary.”

A recurring image in Il Divo is Andreotti turning off lights, something that struck a chord with Nicaso. “There was always a little darkness in his house,” Nicaso recalls. “The same darkness that characterized his way with power.”

Story of a Mafia kiss returns to Toronto – September 09, 2008 – Peter Edwards, staff reporter – This story was found at: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/FilmFest/article/495566

Two Montreal-area men, including one living in the West Island, face charges alleging they were among the biggest suppliers of cocaine to organized crime groups in the city after a police investigation allegedly linked both to more than 60 tonnes of the drug smuggled into North America.

Firmino Tavares, 51, of Dollard des Ormeaux, was arrested at his luxury home on Northview St. yesterday morning. His house, estimated to be worth more than $1 million, was searched and placed under a seizure order by Revenue Canada. The government is seeking more than $1.8 million in unpaid taxes on undeclared revenue from his alleged drug trafficking activities.

A company on Tecumseh St. in Dollard des Ormeaux was also searched yesterday in connection with Project Caverne, a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU) investigation that began two years ago.

Meanwhile, in Blainville, Miguel Torres, a 36-year-old man with alleged ties to the Montreal Mafia, was arrested and his home was also placed under a seizure order. In Torres’s case, Revenue Canada is seeking more than $7 million in taxes on undeclared revenue for alleged drug smuggling.

Two other men, who were already in custody, also face charges in connection with Project Caverne.

The investigation began in 2006 after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Texas passed on information to the RCMP. The information corroborated information gathered in past CFSEU investigations.

“It’s immense when you look at the total of 60 tonnes implicated in this case,” said RCMP Inspector Michel Arcand.

“According to elements of our investigation, the four suspects arrested (yesterday) morning were responsible for having imported a minimum of 35 tonnes of cocaine into Canada between 1996 and 2004.”

Arcand said Torres is also suspected of importing 25 tonnes of cocaine for contacts in New York in 2002 and 2003.

Torres is alleged to have ties to the Montreal Mafia and, according to police sources, was targeted as a suspect in Project Colisée, the police investigation that resulted in more than 90 arrests in 2006, including the alleged leaders of the Rizzuto organization. Torres was not arrested in Project Colisée but now faces four charges alleging he imported cocaine into Canada while conspiring with an important Colombian cartel.

The charges filed at the Montreal courthouse allege all four men conspired with several Mexican and Colombian men who have already been indicted or convicted in high profile U.S. cases. Included among the list of co-conspirators is Victor Manuel Mejia Munera, a drug lord who was gunned down by Colombian police in April.

The two other men charged in Project Caverne are alleged to have worked underneath Arcand and Torres.

Giovanni (Johnny) Somma, 40, a man with ties to the Hells Angels chapter in Sherbrooke, was arrested at a Montreal halfway house where he was on day parole while serving a 2-year sentence for drug trafficking.

The fourth man, Gerardo Hurtado, 45, is currently serving an 8-year term at the Archambault penitentiary. He received the sentence in 2005, after pleading guilty to taking part in a major drug trafficking conspiracy.

Major cocaine-smuggling operation busted – PAUL CHERRY – The Gazette – Wednesday, June 18, 2008 – http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=f2ff718c-f35c-4e96-8113-bdeffef842a1