Montreal Mafia status - Post Rizzuto Era

[Wiseguy]

I will try to message him for clarifications on Friday, as we expect to virtually view the same sentencing for a Quebec organized-crime figure who moved to Ontario. I’d like to ask him whether Silva considering himself "inducted" into the Rizzuto "family" is different from Andrea Scoppa being deemed by Renaud as a "man of honour" who is "independent" — these last two terms, when placed in the order "independent man of honour," are an oxymoron.

That's a good question. Renaud has been quite conservative (I believe for good reason) when it comes to labelling individuals as "hommes d'honneur" and it's clear from the context in which he uses the term that it refers to inducted members. The labelling of Scoppa as an "independent" like you pointed out is I think the most questionable instance of it.

Something I've been thinking about recently is the disbanding of the honoured society in Naples in the early 20th century and how organised crime continued without the same formal structures and rituals. I wonder if the same thing has happened in Montreal following the death of Vito Rizzuto and the murders of the other "men of honour" around that same time. We can often get stuck on when (if at all) the Rizzuto group went from being a Bonanno decina to an independent borgata, but perhaps the criminal organisation headed today by Leonardo Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito is not even a formally structured cosa nostra group at all.

I've been waiting for a post like this. I really have been wanting to go in on this... but the pushback can be exhausting. Gotta get all my thoughts together..

Two separate but related questions - 1) Are the Rizzutos still a part of the Bonanno family? And 2) Is the Rizzuto organization a Cosa Nostra group today?

As to the first question, people will recall in the 2013 Taloni and 2014 Cournoyer indictments, federal officials referred to the "Rizzuto and Bonanno crime families." Also, if I remember right, the 2014 FBI list of 138 Bonanno members JD posted didn't have any from Montreal.

As to the second question, some may recall that stubbs made a good point how the Montreal underworld was more loosely structured than New York, where different cells could be made up of Bonanno members, members of the Sicilian Mafia, as well as others not formally made but carry a lot of clout within the organization, etc. And that was before all the the chaos and deaths, when there was something of a hierarchy and before things became much more fractured. It seems pretty much all the old-timers that were known to be Cosa Nostra are gone. The "Rizzuto Network" under Leonardo Rizzuto, as it has been more recently called, seems to be mostly made up of the middle-aged sons of these guys and it can only be speculated which, if any, of them were ever formally made or not.