NickleCity wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 10:31 am[snip]
In the comments somebody complains about the media making a big deal and overusing the word shocking. Here is Manning’s reply:
Ruzzuto, Papalia and Caputo’s all have ties to Buffalo.
It’s all interesting I don’t know what to make of it.
Lupara wrote: ↑Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:15 am
antimafia wrote:If Michael Cudmore and Daniel Tomasetti were killed
1. because the Siderno Group knows they were behind the attempted murder of Saverio Serrano, then the Siderno Group might have contacted a Mexican cartel about killing those two. Recall that Carmine Verduci was believed to have arranged heroin shipments from Mexico.
2. because Pat Musitano knows they were behind the murder of Angelo, then Musitano or someone in his crime group might have contacted a Mexican cartel about killing Cudmore and Tomasetti.
3. because they were associated with Danny Ranieri, who Frank Campoli and Rosario Staffiere of the GTA talked about very negatively in January 2013, then the Montreal Mafia might have contacted a Mexican cartel about killing Cudmore and Tomasetti. (However, this does not jibe with Paul Manning's claim.) Recall that Joe Bravo wanted Ranieri to become a made man -- in Sicily, no less, because Bravo knew that this required a Sicilian made man with authority to make Ranieri -- and that Bravo was not in Vito Rizzuto's good graces. The Sixth Family book has numerous mentions of Mexico. Francesco Del Balso and Giuseppe Torre bought a villa in Acapulco in March 2006.
I'd add another theory, that the Violi-Luppinos had them killed in order to prevent them from talking to the police now that they were sought for the murder of Angelo Musitano, thereby erasing any link that would lead back to them.
This is something that happened in Montreal with the killers of Desjardins' brother-in-law. They were caught on camera and shortly after a search warrant for their arrests was made public, they were killed.
Also, I doubt the Musitanos have any pull in Mexico. What we've learned so far is that the Violis are the ones with extensive international connections.
Your Siderno group theory is perhaps the most viable one, with my theory second. [emoji56]
Last year, when I attended in Toronto just a small part of the trial of disgraced Hamilton police officer Craig Ruthowsky, I was shocked to hear the names of so many individuals and crime groups involved in drug importation and trafficking in Hamilton and the surrounding area. There is no doubt in my mind that a good number of these non-Italian criminals are
not dependent on Italian organized crime to get certain drugs into Ontario. Ruthowsky's lawyer, Greg Lafontaine, has in the past represented Martino Caputo (Vito Rizzuto's associate in Ontario who became a right-hand man to Nick Nero of the Niagara Region) and Adriano Scolieri, who was charged in November 2017 in relation to the Project OTremens bust alongside the Violi brothers, Bernardo Luke Rotolo,
et al.
The investigation name "Project Scopa" has been used twice by the Hamilton Police Service (HPS) this century. In the 2000s, Project Scopa ended in 2006 when the investigation into illegal gambling was compromised -- this is an investigation for which Paul Manning had gone undercover. Most of us have previously seen the photo below.
When the HPS was investigating the 2017 murders, months apart, of Mila Barberi (victim of a botched murder attempt on Saverio Serrano) and Angelo Musitano (targeted), the HPS also dubbed this investigation "Project Scopa."
Nicole O'Reilly has reported in at least one article that Danny Ranieri was made, although I don't think I've ever seen her or even law enforcement provide evidence of his induction -- she may be right; I don't know. Ranieri fled Mexico in 2015 before, according to police, preparations began in October 2016 for the murders of Serrano and Musitano. As was previously mentioned in one article in which Antonio Nicaso is quoted, there was speculation that whoever wanted Musitano dead and whoever wanted Serrano dead had both farmed out the contracts to the hit team of Cudmore, Tomasetti, and Abdalla, even if that meant the hit team had clients who were perhaps at odds with each other. When experts provide such an opinion, I usually think the opinion is more than just an opinion -- it's usually based on undisclosed-to-the-public police intelligence.
If the Violis hired the hit team to kill Musitano after the murder of Barberi, then the Violis may have been putting themselves in conflict with the Siderno Group or some other individual/group upset by the attempted murder of Serrano. Another possibility is that the Violis were in fact already in conflict with the Siderno Group and were behind both murder plots. One problem is, Ranieri was already a person of interest right after the Musitano murder -- would the Violis have hired Ranieri and the hit team to murder Musitano? If yes, does this mean that the Violis were on okay terms with Rizzuto loyalists in Montreal (assuming Ranieri was not in the Montreal Mafia's bad books)? Another problem is that the murder of Al Iavarone last September (2018) is considered revenge for the murder of Angelo Musitano in May 2017. Are Tony Iavarone and the Violis on the same side? Recall that Iavarone was seen alongside Antonio Pietrantonio, along with others considered part of the Montreal Mafia organization, early last December at the wedding in Montreal of Hells Angel Martin Robert and Annie Arbic (daughter of narcotrafficker Sharon Simon). Or was Domenico Violi correct when he was recorded saying in September 2016 that relations had stabilized in Montreal? I'm assuming stabilized to the point that Violi had dealings with Francesco Arcadi, Tony Mucci, and Frank Cotroni Jr. without anyone in the Rizzuto camp being bothered by this. Assuming Violi and Pietrantonio met each other through Sal Montagna, Violi could have even introduced Iavarone to Pietrantonio. This chumminess of Iavarone with Montrealers may give us a clue as to the relationship between Pat Musitano and Montreal in the last few years since Rizzuto's death.
At Angelo Musitano's 2012 wedding, Cosimo Commisso of the GTA, Domenico Violi, Natale Luppino, and two other members of the Violi and Luppino families were guests. The Musitanos and the Violi brothers share the same lawyer, Dean Paquette, whom Pat Musitano considers a member of the family. Now we are discussing -- and I'm not judging what we're doing at all -- whether the facade of alliances is something we can all see through for what it was.
Carmine Verduci was born in the same town that Giacomo Luppino was. Verduci would have very likely, in the course of his dealings with his very own Hamilton crew, met and known the Violi brothers. Verduci had ties to the Mexican cartels. As a result, maybe the Violis did too. Ever since journalists heard "extensive international reach" used by police to describe the Violis, the media has continued to hype the Violi brothers without knowing in which countries they have drug connects. The obituaries for John Papalia and Dominic Musitano (Pat and Angelo's father) specifically mentioned relatives in Italy and generally mentioned relatives in Australia. I've never been able to find an obituary for Giacomo Luppino but I've read several obituary articles -- these also mention relatives in Italy and Australia. So do the Violis have criminal contacts just in the US and Colombia? Mexico too? Do we assume the Violis have criminal contacts in Italy and Australia because of relatives there? The Violi brothers definitely took the Luppino-Violi crime group into the 21st century, as the group had shied away from drug importation and trafficking before the Violis got into it big-time in the early 1990s.
There is a bit of history of criminals in Hamilton and the Niagara Region doing business with crime groups in Mexico:
- Peter Montour of the Hamilton area, who died in 2012, had a smuggling operation in the 1980s in which marijuana was imported from Mexico and into Ontario. Montour had Native ancestry; someone told me that Montour might have had some French-Canadian ancestry too. Incidentally, he and another well-known Hamilton crime figure, the still-living old man Paul Gravelle (who has links to Domenico Violi), apparently snitched on Pat Musitano when Pat was fingered in the 1998 murders of Lynn and Fred Gilbank. No one has never been convicted for those murders.
- In 1992, six Hamilton-area men were arrested in relation to the breakup of a Mexico–Texas-Ontario marijuana-smuggling operation that was estimated to have been worth about $25 million a year. One of the men, Lee Whitley, languished in jail for six years. In 1998, he was represented in a US District Court in Buffalo by none other than criminal lawyer Angelo Musitano, born in Ontario, who is related to the Musitanos. Whitley was sentenced to 18 years. Up till a few years ago, Musitano the lawyer even used to have a law office in Niagara Falls, NY in addition to the office he had in Ontario; he had previously represented both American and Canadian clients on both sides of the border.
- In 2012, as part of Project Ink II, Nick Nero and Martino Caputo were among those arrested for a major cocaine-importing and -trafficking operation with links to California and Mexico. Others arrested were from the Niagara Region.
- In 2014, as part of Project Roadmaster, 13 men were arrested in Ontario for another major cocaine-importing ring with ties to Mexico. Police officers fanned out in the Peel, Barrie, and Niagara regions. The importation network was directed by Ontario-based members of the Sinaloa cartel. In 2013 alone, 2,431 kilos of cocaine were imported into Ontario (back then, local prices were approximately $36,000–$39,500 a kilo). The main Canadian players in southern Ontario were Vito
Buffone and Jeffrey Kompon.
Buffone has ancestry from the Rizzutos' hometown of Cattolica Eraclea.
Although the level of violence in the last two years in the Hamilton area might seem disproportionate to what you would associate with illegal gambling, I suspect that illegal gambling is so lucrative that it is being fought over very hard. Montreal might have something to do with it. Before Rizzuto died, he was considered to control Internet gambling in Canada. In the early 2000s, there were obvious links between the Montreal Mafia, Cosimo Commisso, and Pino Avignone (Pat Musitano's stepbrother) with respect to illegal roulette gaming in the Hamilton area (satellite signals were coming from three locations that acted as casinos: Toronto, New York, and Israel). Giuseppe "Joe" Renda was dispatched from Montreal to Toronto and Hamilton at the time to deal with the larger illegal-gambling network.
If the battle over illegal gambling isn't the issue in Hamilton, then perhaps the battle over drug trafficking is. Just a couple of tidbits here and there I've been collecting, some of which you've seen before:
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https://twitter.com/jamesdubro/status/9 ... 3763193856
james dubro
@jamesdubro
Expert: Rival mobsters want to obliterate Musitano crime family
http://torontosun.com/news/local-news/e ... me-family/ …. A twofer-1 hit team for two sep mob killings. Pat Musitano days numbered, but He still has his crew & still has hand in many criminal enterprises including now online gambling partnership & d
2:41 PM - 24 Jan 2018 from Toronto, Ontario
Paul Manning
@mobinfiltrator
Replying to @jamesdubro
Nope, Pat’s strong as ever. Especially now the Violis are inside. Ang was dispatched for different reason and his murder has nothing to do with York homicide. Same striker is all, motive different.
9:16 PM - 25 Jan 2018
james dubro
@jamesdubro
Pat Musitano I just found out by thru a v credible mob street source has a new online gambling op working with some ppl in welland & NF as well as with native entrepreneurs & others on the other side of the border. So he’s not dead yet but still certaintly imperiled by rivals
11:25 PM - 25 Jan 2018 from Toronto, Ontario
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https://www.facebook.com/jamesabookguy/ ... 7356735330
James R Dubro
September 20, 2018 at 2:01 pm
Same hit man team for Angelo Musitano killing and second but botched mob hit in Woodbridge last year. Possibly also part of hit team for last week’s Ancaster related prof hit of Albert Iavarone who knew two of the hit team. This is a big story of a major very deadly Calabrian mob Cell fight for coke territory and power in GTA/southern Ontario. Many ndrangheta cells in GTA and Italy involved in violent fight Now from Musitanos to Verducci to Ursino to other Calabrian Mafia cells here close to Italy including Vaughan/Mexico/ Italy Coke king Diego Serrano’s associate’s here and in the USA Italy and Mexico. And if course there was the recent double murder of Calabrian mob boss Cosimo Commisso’s cousin with his girlfriend in Toronto . Much more to come of this story which is far from finished
https://www.facebook.com/jamesabookguy/ ... 7990985330
James R Dubro
September 20, 2018 at 4:11 PM
Major deadly GTA Calabrian Mafia war is now on as further indicated by cop arrest today of 1 of 3 of from one GTA mob hit team involved . Cops link last wks Iavrone murder in Hamilton with mafioso Musitano’s murder on Waterdown & Barberi(well connected Vaughan mobster Diego Serrano’s son was real target hit) killing in Vaughan last year there was also the recent double murder of longtime Calabrian mob Cosimo Commisso’s cousin with his girlfriend. This is a very big development involving at least 3/4 Ndrangheta cells in GTA (ties to Italy USA Mexico) vying for coke routes & more GTA Calabrian mob power. Old time Calabrian Cell leaders against newer Ndrangheta cells bosses with even better connections in their native Italy.
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https://twitter.com/StephenGm_Jr/status ... 2151209985
Stephen Metelsky
@StephenGm_Jr
"There is a lingering stigma against the Luppino-Violi family after they let the police agent into their inner circle..Violi brothers being sent to prison also leaves a void." @TheSpec @NicoleatTheSpec #OrganizedCrime #HamOnt #Hamilton #HamiltonSpectator #Mafia #UnderWorldStories
1:16 PM - 2 Feb 2019
https://twitter.com/jamesdubro/status/1 ... 4639440896
james dubro
@jamesdubro
Could Cece have been involved with the police agent gaining trust? As Rocco's son & Luppino family real estate handler might he have slipped up in some serious way leading to the breach of the inner circle? The hit seems pretty organized.
8:17 AM - 3 Feb 2019 from Boston, MA
Stephen Metelsky
@StephenGm_Jr
Replying to @jamesdubro
Police agents are tasked/directed under carefully crafted investigative scripts, 2 attain incriminating evidence from OC targets, via conversations & pre-planned illegal transactions. An agent of this stature wouldn’t focus on peripheral relatives/targets not involved in OC.
1:23 PM - 3 Feb 2019