Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

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NickleCity
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by NickleCity »

stubbs wrote: Wed Jan 16, 2019 4:45 pm Also, my guess is the majority of the Buffalo family’s power is in Hamilton. Whether that’s 80/20 or 95/5 or whatever, I don’t know. But my guess is in terms of made guys operating on the actual streets of Buffalo, like actually running rackets, has to be no more than 5... 10 guys tops.
I was just reading the Sept. 17 Peter Edwards article again about Buffalo playing a role in the Southern Ontario mob war. Interesting to read with some temporal distance and the new information about Violi. Anyway, this line caught my attention:
Iavarone didn’t have a criminal record. He was known to police because he was “associated to individuals involved in traditional organized crime in the Hamilton area,” Det.-Sgt. Peter Thom of the Hamilton police said hours after his murder.

“It’s our belief that there is something going on in the underworld, maybe a power struggle,” Thom said.

Some of Iavarone’s underworld ties were south of the border, sources said.

“The recently deceased had ties to New York,” a former police investigator said.
I know there was discussion about “New York State Mob” and “ties to New York” in this article, but I would say that it is pretty clear that this refers to Buffalo now.

That being said I think these “south of the border ties” and the fact that Paul Manning earlier in the piece is quoted as saying “Buffalo will always have a say north of the border” makes it hard to suggest that most of Buffalo’s membership is in Hamilton.

Here is the link to the article: https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2018 ... s-say.html
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by newera_212 »

johnny_scootch wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:11 pm
newera_212 wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 5:48 pm its interesting that the run the Rochester family had almost parallelled the run of the city of rochester itself. for a while, basically the 50s until the mid 80s, the place was a boom town with a lot of money to be made up there. everyone working, everyone spending money, everyone gambling, everyone going out. the rochester family was there for all of that. their time ended due to internal fighting and indictments, but it timed up perfectly with the decline of the region. things are turning around up there now (buffalo too) for the better, but back in the day the trajectory of LCN activity there closely followed the rise and fall of the region's economy as a whole.

still a lot of italians up there till this day and on top of that there has strangly been an influx of calabrian immigrants to the area the last 15-20 years (not conflating this to relate to any sort of mob resurgance or anything of the sort)
Rochester recently brought back their old Little Italy Feast, they hadn't held it in many years. I know several people involved in the craft brewing industry who've left NYC for Rochester. Most have seemed to get along very well, the city itself is doing a lot better than it had been for decades.
yeah its doing great up there. same with buffalo, but especially rochester. both are great places to live if you could mind the weather and either have a good hustle / business or get a good paying job (which are still somewhat sparce) . very underrated areas that are making a comeback. can still get a house in a good area for less than $100k too. but the property taxes, especially in rochester, are crazy
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by Frank »

scagghiuni wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 3:28 pm
Frank wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:07 pm With the addition of maybe a few previously unidentified members from that old list and the possibility that more member were recently made around the same time as Violi, that is possible to reach the 30 number that Violi stated.
i think the family has 30 made members just like violi stated, of course being a small family i don't know how really the recruitment pool is large and it could be wiped out just with a couple of indictments, but these are just speculations
anyway violi who is a member stated it and it is true for me lol no matter if fbi thinks the family is dead, wiretaps contradict it
I agree, and 30 members is a very low number after you subtract the old timers.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by CabriniGreen »

How about the guys arrested with Dom Violi?

Adriano Valentino Scolieri, Richmond Hill; Bernardo Luke Rotolo, Woodbridge; Massimigliano Carfagna??
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Re: RE: Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by Lupara »

CabriniGreen wrote:How about the guys arrested with Dom Violi?

Adriano Valentino Scolieri, Richmond Hill; Bernardo Luke Rotolo, Woodbridge; Massimigliano Carfagna??
Most likely member/associates of his crew.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

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newera_212 wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 9:26 pm
johnny_scootch wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:11 pm
newera_212 wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 5:48 pm its interesting that the run the Rochester family had almost parallelled the run of the city of rochester itself. for a while, basically the 50s until the mid 80s, the place was a boom town with a lot of money to be made up there. everyone working, everyone spending money, everyone gambling, everyone going out. the rochester family was there for all of that. their time ended due to internal fighting and indictments, but it timed up perfectly with the decline of the region. things are turning around up there now (buffalo too) for the better, but back in the day the trajectory of LCN activity there closely followed the rise and fall of the region's economy as a whole.

still a lot of italians up there till this day and on top of that there has strangly been an influx of calabrian immigrants to the area the last 15-20 years (not conflating this to relate to any sort of mob resurgance or anything of the sort)
Rochester recently brought back their old Little Italy Feast, they hadn't held it in many years. I know several people involved in the craft brewing industry who've left NYC for Rochester. Most have seemed to get along very well, the city itself is doing a lot better than it had been for decades.
yeah its doing great up there. same with buffalo, but especially rochester. both are great places to live if you could mind the weather and either have a good hustle / business or get a good paying job (which are still somewhat sparce) . very underrated areas that are making a comeback. can still get a house in a good area for less than $100k too. but the property taxes, especially in rochester, are crazy
Things are definitely on the rebound WNY. It is a good place to live with lots of things to do. I love festival season in the summer. The one downside is property taxes. Niagara County consistently ranks highest in property tax burden over anywhere else in the country.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by Frank »

CabriniGreen wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 1:13 am How about the guys arrested with Dom Violi?

Adriano Valentino Scolieri, Richmond Hill; Bernardo Luke Rotolo, Woodbridge; Massimigliano Carfagna??
If you are going by the info of 30 to 32 members and subtract the known members that were or are semi active in the United States, that might give you a figure close to how many Canadian members there were at the time Violi said this to CI. I'm sure he and the Canadian crew or crews have a good number of associates. If you are going by what Violi said, and in my opinion he meant that number as total membership, then you can't go over 30 or 32 mark. Remember there could be a handful of unidentified members that had nothing to do with the Canadian side and that would be deducted from the 30 to 32 .
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by antimafia »

I'm trying to help determine who the made Canadian members of the Buffalo Family are or were at one time, roughly in the last 30 years.

Please note that the murdered Carmen Barillaro, killed in 1997, was considered made by the FBI. In Peter Edwards's July 29, 1997 Toronto Star article, published the day after Barillaro's funeral, are the following two sentences: "As a teenager, Barillaro was a member of the Centre Gang on Clifton Hill. He built a fearsome reputation on Niagara Falls streets as he rose to become a 'made member' of the New York State mob's Niagara operations, according to the FBI."

Back on September 7 and 8, 1990, the Buffalo News published back-to-back articles that quoted FBI Special Agent Robert Ulmer, who referred to Barillaro as made. In both articles, Ulmer also identifies Nicodemo Bruzzese and Dominic Vaccaro (both Ontario based) as made.

Link to September 7, 1990 article (which NickleCity posted on Gangster BB Net last November):

https://buffalonews.com/1990/09/07/14-s ... local-mob/

Link to September 8, 1990 article, as well as some excerpts, appear below (I've added parenthetical information that I've surrounded with square brackets).

https://buffalonews.com/1990/09/08/figu ... ated-them/

Those arrested late Thursday and released on their own recognizance were Carmen Barillaro, 46, 6155 Corwin Crescent [Niagara Falls, Ontario]; Nicodemo Bruzzese, 40, of Tanbark Road, St. Davids [Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario]; Dominic Vaccaro, 44, 6740 Crawford St. [Niagara Falls, Ontario]; Frank J. Spadafora, 36, 6404 Jupiter Boulevard; Nicodemo Scali, 37, 6424 January Drive; John T. Cleary, 47, 6105 McLeod Road; Frederick Campisano, 42, 6353 Franklin Ave., and Joseph F. DeCaria, 28, 5729 McGrail Road.

[snip]

FBI Special Agent Robert Ulmer described Barillaro as the ringleader of the group, which he said is linked to a Hamilton-based faction of the Canadian mob. Ulmer said Barillaro, Bruzzese and Vaccaro are "made members" of the organization and answer to Buffalo organized crime leaders.
________________

If Bruzzese and Vaccaro are still alive -- I haven't checked obituaries yet -- they would respectively be 68 and 72 years old as of last September, but who knows, if alive, whether they are still active?

Canadian journalists Adrian Humphreys, Molly Hayes, and Greg McArthur had access to the Project OTremens documents; Peter Edwards did not.

According to the documents, Domenico Violi, talking to Vincenzo Morena, said he was "made" into the Buffalo Family in January 2015 (Humphreys quoted the word made from the documents). Again, according to the documents, Domenico's uncle Rocco Luppino was allegedly named "captain" around the same time (again, Humphreys quoted the word captain from the documents).

Hayes and McArthur wrote: "To this day, according to Project OTremens court documents, the Violis’ uncles Natale and Rocco Luppino are both 'made' (that is, official) members of Buffalo’s Todaro family." (Hayes and McArthur quoted the word made from the documents.)

If Giuseppe Violi was a made Bonanno at the time of the DOJ's November 9, 2017 release ("Members and Associates of Gambino and Bonanno Organized Crime Families Arrested in Coordinated U.S.-Canadian Takedown"), wouldn't he have been identified as either a member or associate of the Bonanno Family? By the process of elimination, at the time of the bust in November 2017, he was either still unmade or possibly now a made member of Buffalo.

In retrospect, what is puzzling about the Violi brothers' attendance at Morena's induction ceremony in November 2015 is that, according to the OTremens documents, Morena didn't know until late October 2017 or early November 2017 that Domenico was made in January 2015. Neither did any of the higher-up Bonannos at the ceremony, unless one of you has a theory that posits some higher-ups did know but that a decision was made not to introduce a made Domenico Violi to the made Bonannos at the ceremony, including the newly inducted Morena.

If the Bonannos undertook such an unusual induction ceremony for Morena in Hamilton by making an exception for the presence of non-Bonannos Domenico and Giuseppe Violi, would the Bonannos have made an even greater exception by permitting a possibly still unmade Giuseppe Violi who, according to Morena's alleged conversations with him, was dithering about whether to be made into the Buffalo or Bonanno Families? Or maybe the Bonanno higher-ups assumed both Violi brothers were unmade?

Some of you might recall Laurentian's post, below, in the thread "Montreal: Rocco Sollecito has just been shot dead" (scroll to the bottom of http://www.theblackhand.club/forum/view ... &start=120).
Laurentian wrote: Thu Jun 02, 2016 11:00 am[snip]
I want to come back on Cosa Nostra and inductions issue.

The FBI has many years ago set up 3 criteria as to state that someone is a "made" member or not.

a) by the own admission of the person;
b) by information given by another "made" member who is now informing;
c) and by a corroboration by another source closed to that person.

Those three elements have been generally accepted as evidence before courts. So this is why I find always delicate to say that such individual is a "made" member, specially when writing books. :-)
[snip]
Humphreys was careful in his December 3, 2018 article when he wrote the following:

[Domenico] 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.

________________

I encourage any of you to contact Humphreys, even those of you have written the nastiest comments about him on these boards, to ask him his opinions about the Violi brothers and the Buffalo Family. You would probably be surprised to learn that he sees all sides of these debates and does not at all dismiss Pogo's and Wiseguy's views (far from it, in fact). Please don't take my word for it, though -- reach out to Humphreys yourselves, but keep in mind he's fairly busy. The reporting by the four aforementioned Canadian journalists was for the most part unremarkable because they merely relied on the OTremens documents to write the articles; some of the journalists weren't even in court for Domenico Violi's sentencing. On the other hand, Capeci's reporting -- especially the identification of Morena as the informant -- was exceptional.

In Hamilton and the surrounding cities and towns, the biological Papalia, Musitano, and Luppino families are enormous. We can't assume that all the sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, nephews, brothers-in-law, and fathers-in-law are made because they are related to deceased or still-alive made members. Rocco Papalia is still alive -- he is very likely 83, maybe 84, years old -- but we can't even assume he's made just because he is Johnny's brother. If he is made, he sure does like to share tidbits with organized-crime authors about past and current events. I had always assumed that Pat and Angelo Musitano, as well as some of their other male relatives, were 'ndrangheta members. Now I'm not so sure, especially because of more recent information that has dribbled out about whether Buffalo was aware back in 1997 of Pat and Angelo's plots to kill Johnny Pops and Barillaro. We should perhaps take a look at the Canadian names listed in the photo (of names and dates of birth) I uploaded back on November 17, 2017, found at http://www.theblackhand.club/forum/view ... 744#p61744. Pino Avignone is related to the Musitanos. Bruno Pisani, still alive, was also known as an associate of Vito Rizzuto and is perhaps just a mob rounder. A number of the Canadians on the list are either quite old or dead.

In the Greater Toronto Area, the only made member I can think of who might have a formal affiliation to the Buffalo Family -- and I'm assuming he is made -- is Peter Scarcella. In the early 1980s, while Paul Volpe was still alive, Buffalo enlisted the Commissos in the GTA to kill both Volpe and Scarcella (who was Volpe's driver). The more apparent reason for the murder plots is that Buffalo wanted to regain its share of the illegal gambling in Toronto, lost as a result of Volpe's distancing himself from Buffalo after Magaddino's death in 1974. The plan to kill Scarcella was scrapped -- Volpe's murder is still a cold case -- and Scarcella actually ended up becoming very close to Remo Commisso. While Scarcella continued to meet with associates of the Buffalo Family in the ensuing years after Volpe was killed in 1983, these associates were Canadians themselves; so it's hard to say what Scarcella's actual contact with Buffalo was.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by johnny_scootch »

There is no way the Bonanno's invited a unmade associate to be present at a making ceremony. It goes against everything the mafia is supposed to stand for. If both Violi's were there you can be 100% sure they were both members of one family or another at the time. My 2 cents.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

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johnny_scootch wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:09 am There is no way the Bonanno's invited a unmade associate to be present at a making ceremony. It goes against everything the mafia is supposed to stand for. If both Violi's were there you can be 100% sure they were both members of one family or another at the time. My 2 cents.
It's definitely highly unlikely but it is still possible. A couple of pages back B. wrote how Buffalo and Bonanno had a history of "verbal oaths" which is in contrast with the usual formality of the average induction ceremony.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by Pogo The Clown »

antimafia wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 1:32 am I'm trying to help determine who the made Canadian members of the Buffalo Family are or were at one time, roughly in the last 30 years.

Felix Borelli is another one. In 1967 he was listed as a suspected member from Niagara Falls, Ontario. He was on the 2006 list as a made member. He has since died but I don't have an exact year.


Daniel Gasbarinni is a possibility. He was listed as a suspected member from Burlington, Ontario in 1967. He died in 2014.


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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by faffy444 »

Felix Borelli passed away in 1998, he was 88 years old.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by antimafia »

eboli wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:28 am
johnny_scootch wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:09 am There is no way the Bonanno's invited a unmade associate to be present at a making ceremony. It goes against everything the mafia is supposed to stand for. If both Violi's were there you can be 100% sure they were both members of one family or another at the time. My 2 cents.
It's definitely highly unlikely but it is still possible. A couple of pages back B. wrote how Buffalo and Bonanno had a history of "verbal oaths" which is in contrast with the usual formality of the average induction ceremony.
I think what johnny_scootch is arguing is that when the Violi brothers attended Morena's induction ceremony in November 2015, the Bonannos, including Vincenzo Morena, knew that the brothers were both made -- not just Domenico -- and that, furthermore, when Morena recorded Domenico in late October 2017 or early November 2017, Morena already knew Domenico was made but Morena was now finding out when Domenico was made (ten months before Morena's induction) and that Domenico had been very recently promoted to underboss. If Morena didn't know Domenico was made when recording him in in late October 2017 or early November 2017, Domenico would have been violating protocol because a third made member would have had to have been present to introduce the made Domenico to the made Morena; so by at least November 2015, Morena already knew Domenico was made.

So by November 2015, Giuseppe Violi would have been made in either the Bonanno or Buffalo Families. However, given the DOJ release on November 9, 2017 and the RCMP release on the same date (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/r ... 39483.html), I'm inclined to think that Giuseppe was made in the Buffalo Family -- in the RCMP release, neither Buffalo nor Todaro is mentioned, but it states the following: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in New York City has been conducting a parallel, but separate investigation into La Cosa Nostra in that city, focusing on members of the Bonanno and Gambino families. Today in New York, several made members and associates of those families have been arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking, loan sharking, extortion, and money laundering." Which leads me to believe the RCMP was investigating Canadian members and associates of the Buffalo Family.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by johnny_scootch »

eboli wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:28 am
johnny_scootch wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:09 am There is no way the Bonanno's invited a unmade associate to be present at a making ceremony. It goes against everything the mafia is supposed to stand for. If both Violi's were there you can be 100% sure they were both members of one family or another at the time. My 2 cents.
It's definitely highly unlikely but it is still possible. A couple of pages back B. wrote how Buffalo and Bonanno had a history of "verbal oaths" which is in contrast with the usual formality of the average induction ceremony.
I don't think the fact that the Bonanno's do a verbal oath only ceremony had any effect on who is/was allowed to attend ceremonies. It's clearly a members only thing. We've heard about all kinds of ceremonies from jailhouse bathrooms to fancy restaurants, verbal oath only to the full gun and knife finger pricking shabang. It could be 3 guys pulled over in a car or the full administration and 20 captains but the one thing we've never heard of is non members ever attending. Not one single example.

You might want to bring up Joe Massino's version of his ceremony when they were in the back of a bar and other patrons were also in the same establishment but they went thru some steps to cover up what they were doing and those other people couldn't be considered as 'attending'.
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Re: Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

Post by johnny_scootch »

antimafia wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:27 am
I think what johnny_scootch is arguing is that when the Violi brothers attended Morena's induction ceremony in November 2015, the Bonannos, including Vincenzo Morena, knew that the brothers were both made -- not just Domenico -- and that, furthermore, when Morena recorded Domenico in late October 2017 or early November 2017, Morena already knew Domenico was made but Morena was now finding out when Domenico was made (ten months before Morena's induction) and that Domenico had been very recently promoted to underboss. If Morena didn't know Domenico was made when recording him in in late October 2017 or early November 2017, Domenico would have been violating protocol because a third made member would have had to have been present to introduce the made Domenico to the made Morena; so by at least November 2015, Morena already knew Domenico was made.

So by November 2015, Giuseppe Violi would have been made in either the Bonanno or Buffalo Families. However, given the DOJ release on November 9, 2017 and the RCMP release on the same date (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/r ... 39483.html), I'm inclined to think that Giuseppe was made in the Buffalo Family -- in the RCMP release, neither Buffalo nor Todaro is mentioned, but it states the following: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in New York City has been conducting a parallel, but separate investigation into La Cosa Nostra in that city, focusing on members of the Bonanno and Gambino families. Today in New York, several made members and associates of those families have been arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking, loan sharking, extortion, and money laundering." Which leads me to believe the RCMP was investigating Canadian members and associates of the Buffalo Family.
Fully agree with you on this. To me it makes sense that Giuseppe would go with Buffalo and all his blood relatives over the Bonanno family.
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