Gangland news 1st February 2018

[Hailbritain]

By Peter Edwards

Violi Brothers Tragically Rooted In Bonanno Crime Family

Gang Land Exclusive!Paolo Violi at his Montreal headquartersIt was 40 years ago, shortly after suppertime on Sunday January 22, 1978, when two young boys lost their father Paolo Violi in a gangland-style slaying in Montreal with the blessings of Bonanno crime family leaders in New York.

The boys, Giuseppe (Joe) and Domenico, were eight and 11 respectively when their father, who only a few years earlier had become the boss of the Montreal wing of the Bonanno family, was ambushed with a short-barrelled lupara blast while playing cards in the ice cream shop that had been his Montreal headquarters.

It was a horrific time for the brothers. Two of their uncles were also slain in the mob war between the Calabrian Violi forces and Nicolo and Vito Rizzuto's Sicilian rebels who had shot their way to the top of the Bonanno crime family's important drug smuggling outpost north of the U.S.-Canada border.

The boys were moved out of the province as the Rizzutos rose to power in Montreal. The brothers grew to become men in the relative safety of Hamilton, near Toronto, where they were raised by their mother under the watchful eye of their maternal grandfather Giacomo Luppino, an old 'ndrangheta leader who answered to the Magaddino family of Buffalo, about an hour's drive from Hamilton.

Luppino, who died of natural causes in Hamilton in March 1988 at the age of 88, had been a founder of the Camero di Controllo, or local board of control of the Calabrian 'ndrangheta in southern Ontario. It was an institution he helped transport from his birthplace of Calabria in southern Italy.

Francesco, Paolo & Rocco VioliThe boys, Giuseppe (Joe) and Domenico, are 47 and 51 now. Until recently, they enjoyed a low profile and apparent prosperity in Hamilton, where they ran restaurant and flooring and décor companies.

That low key persona ended dramatically last November when the brothers were arrested and linked to their late father's New York-based Bonanno family following a joint investigation by Canadian and U.S. law enforcement officials that ended with 18 gangsters being charged with organized criminal activity in the two countries.

Their low profile was shattered in a massive international police investigation into organized crime, which stood out for a couple of things beyond the historic value of their name.

One reason is that their arrests are linked to a "police agent," the term Canadian law enforcers use to identify what U.S officials call a cooperating witness, who was inducted into the Bonanno family in a joint probe with U.S. authorities. Gangsters on both sides of the border call the government operative, whom Gang Land has identified as Vincenzo Morena, an Italian national formerly from Brooklyn, and more recently a resident of Hamilton, a snitch, stool pigeon, or worse.

The Violi bust is also notable because it includes fentanyl and carfentanil trafficking. Those two drugs are at the centre of a national opiate crisis in Canada. There are no more politically incorrect drugs in Canada amongst criminals.

The busts meant renewed public attention on the Violi family and its deep criminal roots in the area. At a news conference announcing the charges in November, Superintendent Chris Leather of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alleged the brothers are "well-established" in organized crime, with a reach into Italy and other parts of Europe.

Giacomo LuppinoThe family has been well established in the underworld since the late 1960s, when the RCMP hid recording devices amongst Luppino's tomato plants in the backyard of his cozy, detached brick home in working class east Hamilton.

The tomato plant recordings captured Luppino waxing on to his wife Domenica and son-in-law Paolo Violi about wide a variety of things — ranging from the freewheeling playing style of colorful Toronto Maple Leafs' hockey player Eddie Shack to what Luppino considered the abundance of crime opportunities in his new homeland.

Most significantly, the tapes show that Luppino and his son-in-law shared what they considered a deeply shared sense of honor.

The tapes also captured Luppino's feelings of contempt for a man who didn't respect the traditional family unit and another man he considered a coward.

"I told him what kind of a half a man is he?" Luppino said. "If I have to do something in fear, I'll go and drown myself in the lake. I told him that if a man is weak and has to do things because of fear and these things are wrong, then it's better for him to kill himself.

"I told him if they want, kill me. Because I say so. And if they should kill me, I'll always spit in their faces and tell them they are the dishonerate (the dishonored)." One tape picked up the old mobster saying he wished his English was better, so he could set up a business, as "people here are much easier to cheat than in Italy."

Vito RizzutoLuppino was nothing if not proud. Before he came to Canada in 1956, Luppino had been investigated in connection with two murders in Calabria and, legend has it, his wallet held what appeared to be a piece of shrivelled lather. Mob lore had it that it was the ear of a man who dared to refuse to commit a crime for him. Luppino was said to have punished this insubordination by hacking the ear off in public, in a grisly variation of the manner in which a bullfighter carves the ears from a vanquished bull.

The secret recordings from Luppino's tomato plants were later used by the RCMP to help prove the existence of the 'ndrangheta in Canada.

In one of the recorded talks, Luppino told his wife that he and their son Jimmy had recently met with Buffalo boss Stefano (The Undertaker) Magaddino to talk about Toronto mobster Paul Volpe.

"Magaddino told Jimmy that if he went with or had dealings with Paul Volpe to be very careful, because he will cheat you or see that you are sent to jail," Luppino said. Magaddino also mentioned that Volpe cheated him once.

In the recent case, the Violis are charged with conspiracy to import a controlled substance; possession for the purpose of trafficking a controlled substance; trafficking a controlled substance; trafficking contraband tobacco; trafficking firearms, and participating in a criminal organization.

Eddie ShackUndercover officers allegedly bought six kilograms of fentanyl and carfentanil in six transactions in the operation. Trace amounts of fenentyl can kill and carfentanil is 100 times more potent.

The operation began when officers flipped Morena, a mobster with contacts in New York and Canada who turned on his old associates, police said.

The FBI in New York conducted what the RCMP called "a parallel, but separate investigation" into the Bonanno and Gambino families.

"We had an opportunity to infiltrate some higher level traditional organized crime members," Leather said, adding that the police source "was respected by traditional organized crime in both countries."

In fact, Morena was so respected he was inducted into the Bonanno crime family, according to the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office, who like Canadian police have declined to confirm his identity.

This isn't the first time the Violi family suffered as a result of an undercover police operation.

In the early 1970s, Paolo Violi rented out an apartment above his ice-cream parlor/coffee shop on Jean-Talon East in Montreal that doubled as his crime headquarters. His tenant was a limping loner who said he was an electrician who had split from his girlfriend. In fact, he was Bob Menard of the Montreal police. The rent for the apartment was $125 monthly.

Vincenzo MorenaMenard was a master actor but his limp was real. It came from a shotgun blast from some francophone bank robbers. I spoke to him decades ago, and it was clear he had far more respect for Violi than the robbers who gave him his distinctive limp.

He pointed to mug shots of the bank robbers and his voice rose: "Look in their eyes. What do you see? You see hatred. You see no fucking soul. You know what I see? I see animal." By contrast, he said Violi's eyes demonstrated "intelligence but ruthlessness. Total ruthlessness. Paolo would kill but he'd to it in a much more intelligent way. . . You want to know the difference? They (bank robbers) will kill you indiscriminately, for no reason, while Paolo would kill you if he had to for power and for position and for advantage.

"That's the difference," he continued. "They'll kill you because they don't like you having a toothpick in your mouth. That's the difference here. Goddamn animals. Nothing else . . . Paolo will use killing as a means to an end, a method. If you kill someone that you're trying to gather money from — unless you want to kill him as an example — what they hell's the use of killing source or revenue? . . . That's not businesslike. Real smart guys don't kill until it absolutely has to be done."

The evening of his murder, Violi likely knew he was being set up but he refused to run or beg, Menard said. Perhaps he didn't know that police surveillance on him had quietly been called off. When Paolo got a call to come play cards that evening, he went towards the danger. That didn't surprise Menard at all: "Paolo was not a runner. Paolo was not the type who would run away from anything . . . He was going to weasel to the cop? Ha! Paolo weasel to the cops? Not when your balls turn to brick . . . Not Paolo. Never! . . . He's just not the type. To him, honor, that was it. I'm not glorifying the sonofabitch. I'm just saying that was the way he was."

Stefano MagaddinoThe Canadian aspect of the investigation, code-named OTremens, has resulted in an "expose of the inner workings of the Italian Mafia in southwestern Ontario and how the collective cartel is able to capitalize on the commercialization of a variety of criminal commodities," said Tom Andreopoulos, a deputy chief federal prosecutor with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.

There are also hints the case could point towards police corruption. A Toronto police civilian employee was also accused of leaking information and had been previously charged with 20 counts of breach of trust for database queries.

"This investigation . . . demonstrated organized crime's ability to corrupt people in positions of public trust to further their criminal enterprise," the RCMP said in a prepared statement.

"Police believe she made queries on behalf of a criminal organization . . ."

This isn't the first time the Violi family name has popped up amidst allegations of police corruption in Ontario.

Paolo VioliA confidential 2002 police intelligence report obtained by The Toronto Star states that Hamilton police officers helped Domenico Violi avoid prosecution.

The report by Halton Regional Police, which borders on Hamilton, calls a longstanding Hamilton police officer "a close, paid associate" of Violi.

The "Introduction/Synopsis" is based on a confidential source and reads: "Domenic VIOLI of Hamilton (son of Paolo Violi formerly of Montreal — deceased)" had "a number of serving Police Officers providing intelligence and assistance avoid prosecution for crimes committed."

The Halton Police intelligence report states that a Hamilton police officer "has been providing information to TOC (traditional organized crime) and others since the late 80's."

Hamilton police wouldn't comment on the documents.

The report continues that a top member of the force "along with other subordinates were also closely tied with TOC (traditional organized crime) and have been since the early 80's."

The report states that one Hamilton police officer "is a close, paid associate of Domenic VIOLI of Hamilton, heir apparent to the LUPPINO Crime group of Burlington."

Neither of the Violi brothers has been granted bail.

Editor's Note: Guest Columnist Peter Edwards, an acclaimed Toronto Star newsman for more than 30 years, is a recognized expert on organized crime in Canada. His most recent true-crime book, with co-author Antonio Nicaso, Business of Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War, was published in 2015. It aired last year on FX Canada as a six-part series, Bad Blood.

Canadian Mobsters Avoid Opiate Busts, Until Now

Giuseppe VioliThe opiate fentanyl is at the centre of an extremely lucrative — and deadly — emerging drug trade in Canada. That said, no one with any stature in the mob here had been busted for it until the recent arrests of brothers Domenic and Giuseppe Violi.

The Violi brothers were arrested in their hometown of Hamilton, a city with strong mob roots that's an hour's drive both from Toronto and Buffalo.

A source familiar with the Violi brothers says they vehemently deny any connections to the opiates, fentanyl and carfentanil. The source stresses that the brothers consider the deadly opiates to be beneath their honor.

An RCMP report obtained under the Access to Information Act notes that no one has anything close to a monopoly on the fentanyl trade inside Canada. The two-year-old report states: "Law enforcement reporting indicates an emerging open market whereby myriad organized crime groups and trafficking cells are involved at varying levels of the illicit fentanyl trade."

Fentanyl is a lab-produced drug that mimics natural opiates like heroin and cocaine. It is extremely concentrated, with a potency 100 times that of heroin. There's an ultra-potent derivative, carfentanil, which is 100 times stronger than fentanyl.

The two drugs are used by traffickers to push up the strength of cocaine, heroin and meth on the streets. Drug dealers often get things wrong and thousands of their customers have died by mistake.

Domenico VioliThe concentrated form of fentanyl and carfentanil makes it easy to ship through the mails and courier services in small, tough-to-detect packages.

Deals are often set up on the Internet, making it tough for even established mobsters to gain control of it.

The RCMP report continues: "The rapid and dynamic growth of the illicit fentanyl market in Canada is directly linked to the easy accessibility by Canadian-based traffickers to China-sourced fentanyl and its analogues via Internet websites."

There have been some attempts to set up fentanyl making plants inside Canada. The potential profits here are enormous. It costs $100,000 to make a million pills worth $20 million on the street.

It has been widely reported that it's a particularly deadly drug. A lethal dose of pure fentanyl is 2 mgs for typical adult, which is a miniscule amount. (There are 4,200 mgs in a teaspoon of sugar.)

Fentanyl has caught plenty of alarming headlines over the past few years in Canada.

It's at the centre of an escalating opioid crisis in Canada, which kills more than 2,800 Canadians yearly. In Toronto alone last October, emergency workers responded to 2,120 overdose calls, compared with 1,650 for the first 10 months of 2016.

Police and prosecutors cast a particularly hard eye on fentanyl. Several police forces and prosecutors now lay manslaughter charges against alleged traffickers who supplied it to victims of overdose deaths.

Bonanno Boondoggle In Canada: 'Son Of Oaf'

Vincenzo MorenaThe recently disclosed Bonanno crime family induction that took place in Canada in 2015 has the New York-based Bonannos and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police being mentioned together again for the first time in years.

These days, however, the stories revolve not around Montreal, where the scowly Carmine (Lilo) Galante established a faction there in the 1950s when he was the Bonanno underboss primarily to help the mob's drug trafficking ventures.

The Bonanno family's Canadian connections now seem to have moved west, and are based in and around Hamilton, where the Violi brothers, and several of their co-defendants allegedly conducted their criminal business in recent years.

Unfortunately for the gangsters, that's also where "police agent" Morena, the new family member whose ceremony was captured on videotape in a secret ceremony, also hung out, after sneaking into Canada from Italy, where the U.S. had deported him in 2004.

Morena's induction could be nicknamed "Son of Oaf."

John PapaliaThe big-time Bonannos blunder is perhaps the biggest embarrassment for gangsters in Canada since the 1980s when undercover RCMP officer Giovanni (John) Perischetti was granted membership in the 'ndrangheta, or Calabrian Mafia, in London, Ontario in what was called "Project Oaf."

Montreal is still a place to hide out and move drugs. And it used to be a good place for the Bonannos to recruit hitmen, including the late Vito Rizzuto, who took part in the Three Captains Murders in 1981 in Brooklyn, when rebel capos Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato, Dominick (Big Trin) Trinchera and Philip (Philly Lucky) Giaccone were killed in a social club.

For his part, Galante lasted a few years and then was deported. By the time he left, Vic (The Egg) Cotroni was in charge of Montreal and John (Pops) Papalia in Hamilton, just west of Toronto. Papalia was in the same French Connection heroin bust with Galante in the early 1960s.

Cotroni was definitely in the Bonanno orbit. Papalia apprenticed in Montreal under Galante and then returned to his birthplace of Hamilton, and the orbit of Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo.

Magaddino's Canadian operations centered on the southern Ontario cities of Hamilton and Toronto, with a strong hand in drugs, construction, bookmaking, gaming and loan-sharking. Along with Papalia, Paul Volpe of Toronto were the two southern Ontario representatives for Magaddino.

Salvatore MontagnaMembership in the Magaddino or Bonanno family can be a dangerous thing in Canada though.

Paolo Violi's younger brother Francesco was murdered in 1977, a year before Paolo was shot dead. Brother Rocco was killed by a sniper in 1980. Volpe was murdered in 1983. Papalia got his in 1997.

More recently, Salvatore "Sal the Iron Worker" Montagna, acting boss of the Bonanno family, was murdered by local mobsters led by Raynald Desjardins on Nov. 24, 2011, in Charlemagne, just east of Montreal in a fight for control of the local underworld.

There are no trial dates scheduled for the Violi brothers, or for the acting Bonanno capo, Damiano Zummo, who conducted the videotaped initiation ceremony of Morena and congratulated him on becoming a "friend of ours with the Bonanno's," or for any of the other defendants in either country.

But if and when one of them goes to trial, and the videotape is played in court, and replayed countless times on YouTube, mobsters on both sides of the border will cringe at seeing what then-acting Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde called an "extraordinary achievement for law enforcement."

[Cheech]

All about Canada. What a disappointment. Might as well write about Chicago.
Skinny guy on trial this week and nothing. Ugh

[NYNighthawk]

I know Cheech - I feel like pulling up some old Soprano's episodes just to feel American again.

[Chucky]

I wonder if Merlino wanted to call Capeci as an expert witness as well, he did with Anastasia and Schratwieser and now neither are covering the case.

[Laurentian]

All about canada. What a dissapointment. Might as well write aboit chicago.
Skinny guy kn trial this week and nothing. Ugh

Action is not always in the USA, when it pertains to the Mob!

[Laurentian]

By Peter Edwards

Violi Brothers Tragically Rooted In Bonanno Crime Family

Gang Land Exclusive!Paolo Violi at his Montreal headquartersIt was 40 years ago, shortly after suppertime on Sunday January 22, 1978, when two young boys lost their father Paolo Violi in a gangland-style slaying in Montreal with the blessings of Bonanno crime family leaders in New York.

The boys, Giuseppe (Joe) and Domenico, were eight and 11 respectively when their father, who only a few years earlier had become the boss of the Montreal wing of the Bonanno family, was ambushed with a short-barrelled lupara blast while playing cards in the ice cream shop that had been his Montreal headquarters.

It was a horrific time for the brothers. Two of their uncles were also slain in the mob war between the Calabrian Violi forces and Nicolo and Vito Rizzuto's Sicilian rebels who had shot their way to the top of the Bonanno crime family's important drug smuggling outpost north of the U.S.-Canada border.

The boys were moved out of the province as the Rizzutos rose to power in Montreal. The brothers grew to become men in the relative safety of Hamilton, near Toronto, where they were raised by their mother under the watchful eye of their maternal grandfather Giacomo Luppino, an old 'ndrangheta leader who answered to the Magaddino family of Buffalo, about an hour's drive from Hamilton.

Luppino, who died of natural causes in Hamilton in March 1988 at the age of 88, had been a founder of the Camero di Controllo, or local board of control of the Calabrian 'ndrangheta in southern Ontario. It was an institution he helped transport from his birthplace of Calabria in southern Italy.

Francesco, Paolo & Rocco VioliThe boys, Giuseppe (Joe) and Domenico, are 47 and 51 now. Until recently, they enjoyed a low profile and apparent prosperity in Hamilton, where they ran restaurant and flooring and décor companies.

That low key persona ended dramatically last November when the brothers were arrested and linked to their late father's New York-based Bonanno family following a joint investigation by Canadian and U.S. law enforcement officials that ended with 18 gangsters being charged with organized criminal activity in the two countries.

Their low profile was shattered in a massive international police investigation into organized crime, which stood out for a couple of things beyond the historic value of their name.

One reason is that their arrests are linked to a "police agent," the term Canadian law enforcers use to identify what U.S officials call a cooperating witness, who was inducted into the Bonanno family in a joint probe with U.S. authorities. Gangsters on both sides of the border call the government operative, whom Gang Land has identified as Vincenzo Morena, an Italian national formerly from Brooklyn, and more recently a resident of Hamilton, a snitch, stool pigeon, or worse.

The Violi bust is also notable because it includes fentanyl and carfentanil trafficking. Those two drugs are at the centre of a national opiate crisis in Canada. There are no more politically incorrect drugs in Canada amongst criminals.

The busts meant renewed public attention on the Violi family and its deep criminal roots in the area. At a news conference announcing the charges in November, Superintendent Chris Leather of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alleged the brothers are "well-established" in organized crime, with a reach into Italy and other parts of Europe.

Giacomo LuppinoThe family has been well established in the underworld since the late 1960s, when the RCMP hid recording devices amongst Luppino's tomato plants in the backyard of his cozy, detached brick home in working class east Hamilton.

The tomato plant recordings captured Luppino waxing on to his wife Domenica and son-in-law Paolo Violi about wide a variety of things — ranging from the freewheeling playing style of colorful Toronto Maple Leafs' hockey player Eddie Shack to what Luppino considered the abundance of crime opportunities in his new homeland.

Most significantly, the tapes show that Luppino and his son-in-law shared what they considered a deeply shared sense of honor.

The tapes also captured Luppino's feelings of contempt for a man who didn't respect the traditional family unit and another man he considered a coward.

"I told him what kind of a half a man is he?" Luppino said. "If I have to do something in fear, I'll go and drown myself in the lake. I told him that if a man is weak and has to do things because of fear and these things are wrong, then it's better for him to kill himself.

"I told him if they want, kill me. Because I say so. And if they should kill me, I'll always spit in their faces and tell them they are the dishonerate (the dishonored)." One tape picked up the old mobster saying he wished his English was better, so he could set up a business, as "people here are much easier to cheat than in Italy."

Vito RizzutoLuppino was nothing if not proud. Before he came to Canada in 1956, Luppino had been investigated in connection with two murders in Calabria and, legend has it, his wallet held what appeared to be a piece of shrivelled lather. Mob lore had it that it was the ear of a man who dared to refuse to commit a crime for him. Luppino was said to have punished this insubordination by hacking the ear off in public, in a grisly variation of the manner in which a bullfighter carves the ears from a vanquished bull.

The secret recordings from Luppino's tomato plants were later used by the RCMP to help prove the existence of the 'ndrangheta in Canada.

In one of the recorded talks, Luppino told his wife that he and their son Jimmy had recently met with Buffalo boss Stefano (The Undertaker) Magaddino to talk about Toronto mobster Paul Volpe.

"Magaddino told Jimmy that if he went with or had dealings with Paul Volpe to be very careful, because he will cheat you or see that you are sent to jail," Luppino said. Magaddino also mentioned that Volpe cheated him once.

In the recent case, the Violis are charged with conspiracy to import a controlled substance; possession for the purpose of trafficking a controlled substance; trafficking a controlled substance; trafficking contraband tobacco; trafficking firearms, and participating in a criminal organization.

Eddie ShackUndercover officers allegedly bought six kilograms of fentanyl and carfentanil in six transactions in the operation. Trace amounts of fenentyl can kill and carfentanil is 100 times more potent.

The operation began when officers flipped Morena, a mobster with contacts in New York and Canada who turned on his old associates, police said.

The FBI in New York conducted what the RCMP called "a parallel, but separate investigation" into the Bonanno and Gambino families.

"We had an opportunity to infiltrate some higher level traditional organized crime members," Leather said, adding that the police source "was respected by traditional organized crime in both countries."

In fact, Morena was so respected he was inducted into the Bonanno crime family, according to the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office, who like Canadian police have declined to confirm his identity.

This isn't the first time the Violi family suffered as a result of an undercover police operation.

In the early 1970s, Paolo Violi rented out an apartment above his ice-cream parlor/coffee shop on Jean-Talon East in Montreal that doubled as his crime headquarters. His tenant was a limping loner who said he was an electrician who had split from his girlfriend. In fact, he was Bob Menard of the Montreal police. The rent for the apartment was $125 monthly.

Vincenzo MorenaMenard was a master actor but his limp was real. It came from a shotgun blast from some francophone bank robbers. I spoke to him decades ago, and it was clear he had far more respect for Violi than the robbers who gave him his distinctive limp.

He pointed to mug shots of the bank robbers and his voice rose: "Look in their eyes. What do you see? You see hatred. You see no fucking soul. You know what I see? I see animal." By contrast, he said Violi's eyes demonstrated "intelligence but ruthlessness. Total ruthlessness. Paolo would kill but he'd to it in a much more intelligent way. . . You want to know the difference? They (bank robbers) will kill you indiscriminately, for no reason, while Paolo would kill you if he had to for power and for position and for advantage.

"That's the difference," he continued. "They'll kill you because they don't like you having a toothpick in your mouth. That's the difference here. Goddamn animals. Nothing else . . . Paolo will use killing as a means to an end, a method. If you kill someone that you're trying to gather money from — unless you want to kill him as an example — what they hell's the use of killing source or revenue? . . . That's not businesslike. Real smart guys don't kill until it absolutely has to be done."

The evening of his murder, Violi likely knew he was being set up but he refused to run or beg, Menard said. Perhaps he didn't know that police surveillance on him had quietly been called off. When Paolo got a call to come play cards that evening, he went towards the danger. That didn't surprise Menard at all: "Paolo was not a runner. Paolo was not the type who would run away from anything . . . He was going to weasel to the cop? Ha! Paolo weasel to the cops? Not when your balls turn to brick . . . Not Paolo. Never! . . . He's just not the type. To him, honor, that was it. I'm not glorifying the sonofabitch. I'm just saying that was the way he was."

Stefano MagaddinoThe Canadian aspect of the investigation, code-named OTremens, has resulted in an "expose of the inner workings of the Italian Mafia in southwestern Ontario and how the collective cartel is able to capitalize on the commercialization of a variety of criminal commodities," said Tom Andreopoulos, a deputy chief federal prosecutor with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.

There are also hints the case could point towards police corruption. A Toronto police civilian employee was also accused of leaking information and had been previously charged with 20 counts of breach of trust for database queries.

"This investigation . . . demonstrated organized crime's ability to corrupt people in positions of public trust to further their criminal enterprise," the RCMP said in a prepared statement.

"Police believe she made queries on behalf of a criminal organization . . ."

This isn't the first time the Violi family name has popped up amidst allegations of police corruption in Ontario.

Paolo VioliA confidential 2002 police intelligence report obtained by The Toronto Star states that Hamilton police officers helped Domenico Violi avoid prosecution.

The report by Halton Regional Police, which borders on Hamilton, calls a longstanding Hamilton police officer "a close, paid associate" of Violi.

The "Introduction/Synopsis" is based on a confidential source and reads: "Domenic VIOLI of Hamilton (son of Paolo Violi formerly of Montreal — deceased)" had "a number of serving Police Officers providing intelligence and assistance avoid prosecution for crimes committed."

The Halton Police intelligence report states that a Hamilton police officer "has been providing information to TOC (traditional organized crime) and others since the late 80's."

Hamilton police wouldn't comment on the documents.

The report continues that a top member of the force "along with other subordinates were also closely tied with TOC (traditional organized crime) and have been since the early 80's."

The report states that one Hamilton police officer "is a close, paid associate of Domenic VIOLI of Hamilton, heir apparent to the LUPPINO Crime group of Burlington."

Neither of the Violi brothers has been granted bail.

Editor's Note: Guest Columnist Peter Edwards, an acclaimed Toronto Star newsman for more than 30 years, is a recognized expert on organized crime in Canada. His most recent true-crime book, with co-author Antonio Nicaso, Business of Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War, was published in 2015. It aired last year on FX Canada as a six-part series, Bad Blood.

Canadian Mobsters Avoid Opiate Busts, Until Now

Giuseppe VioliThe opiate fentanyl is at the centre of an extremely lucrative — and deadly — emerging drug trade in Canada. That said, no one with any stature in the mob here had been busted for it until the recent arrests of brothers Domenic and Giuseppe Violi.

The Violi brothers were arrested in their hometown of Hamilton, a city with strong mob roots that's an hour's drive both from Toronto and Buffalo.

A source familiar with the Violi brothers says they vehemently deny any connections to the opiates, fentanyl and carfentanil. The source stresses that the brothers consider the deadly opiates to be beneath their honor.

An RCMP report obtained under the Access to Information Act notes that no one has anything close to a monopoly on the fentanyl trade inside Canada. The two-year-old report states: "Law enforcement reporting indicates an emerging open market whereby myriad organized crime groups and trafficking cells are involved at varying levels of the illicit fentanyl trade."

Fentanyl is a lab-produced drug that mimics natural opiates like heroin and cocaine. It is extremely concentrated, with a potency 100 times that of heroin. There's an ultra-potent derivative, carfentanil, which is 100 times stronger than fentanyl.

The two drugs are used by traffickers to push up the strength of cocaine, heroin and meth on the streets. Drug dealers often get things wrong and thousands of their customers have died by mistake.

Domenico VioliThe concentrated form of fentanyl and carfentanil makes it easy to ship through the mails and courier services in small, tough-to-detect packages.

Deals are often set up on the Internet, making it tough for even established mobsters to gain control of it.

The RCMP report continues: "The rapid and dynamic growth of the illicit fentanyl market in Canada is directly linked to the easy accessibility by Canadian-based traffickers to China-sourced fentanyl and its analogues via Internet websites."

There have been some attempts to set up fentanyl making plants inside Canada. The potential profits here are enormous. It costs $100,000 to make a million pills worth $20 million on the street.

It has been widely reported that it's a particularly deadly drug. A lethal dose of pure fentanyl is 2 mgs for typical adult, which is a miniscule amount. (There are 4,200 mgs in a teaspoon of sugar.)

Fentanyl has caught plenty of alarming headlines over the past few years in Canada.

It's at the centre of an escalating opioid crisis in Canada, which kills more than 2,800 Canadians yearly. In Toronto alone last October, emergency workers responded to 2,120 overdose calls, compared with 1,650 for the first 10 months of 2016.

Police and prosecutors cast a particularly hard eye on fentanyl. Several police forces and prosecutors now lay manslaughter charges against alleged traffickers who supplied it to victims of overdose deaths.

Bonanno Boondoggle In Canada: 'Son Of Oaf'

Vincenzo MorenaThe recently disclosed Bonanno crime family induction that took place in Canada in 2015 has the New York-based Bonannos and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police being mentioned together again for the first time in years.

These days, however, the stories revolve not around Montreal, where the scowly Carmine (Lilo) Galante established a faction there in the 1950s when he was the Bonanno underboss primarily to help the mob's drug trafficking ventures.

The Bonanno family's Canadian connections now seem to have moved west, and are based in and around Hamilton, where the Violi brothers, and several of their co-defendants allegedly conducted their criminal business in recent years.

Unfortunately for the gangsters, that's also where "police agent" Morena, the new family member whose ceremony was captured on videotape in a secret ceremony, also hung out, after sneaking into Canada from Italy, where the U.S. had deported him in 2004.

Morena's induction could be nicknamed "Son of Oaf."

John PapaliaThe big-time Bonannos blunder is perhaps the biggest embarrassment for gangsters in Canada since the 1980s when undercover RCMP officer Giovanni (John) Perischetti was granted membership in the 'ndrangheta, or Calabrian Mafia, in London, Ontario in what was called "Project Oaf."

Montreal is still a place to hide out and move drugs. And it used to be a good place for the Bonannos to recruit hitmen, including the late Vito Rizzuto, who took part in the Three Captains Murders in 1981 in Brooklyn, when rebel capos Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato, Dominick (Big Trin) Trinchera and Philip (Philly Lucky) Giaccone were killed in a social club.

For his part, Galante lasted a few years and then was deported. By the time he left, Vic (The Egg) Cotroni was in charge of Montreal and John (Pops) Papalia in Hamilton, just west of Toronto. Papalia was in the same French Connection heroin bust with Galante in the early 1960s.

Cotroni was definitely in the Bonanno orbit. Papalia apprenticed in Montreal under Galante and then returned to his birthplace of Hamilton, and the orbit of Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo.

Magaddino's Canadian operations centered on the southern Ontario cities of Hamilton and Toronto, with a strong hand in drugs, construction, bookmaking, gaming and loan-sharking. Along with Papalia, Paul Volpe of Toronto were the two southern Ontario representatives for Magaddino.

Salvatore MontagnaMembership in the Magaddino or Bonanno family can be a dangerous thing in Canada though.

Paolo Violi's younger brother Francesco was murdered in 1977, a year before Paolo was shot dead. Brother Rocco was killed by a sniper in 1980. Volpe was murdered in 1983. Papalia got his in 1997.

More recently, Salvatore "Sal the Iron Worker" Montagna, acting boss of the Bonanno family, was murdered by local mobsters led by Raynald Desjardins on Nov. 24, 2011, in Charlemagne, just east of Montreal in a fight for control of the local underworld.

There are no trial dates scheduled for the Violi brothers, or for the acting Bonanno capo, Damiano Zummo, who conducted the videotaped initiation ceremony of Morena and congratulated him on becoming a "friend of ours with the Bonanno's," or for any of the other defendants in either country.

But if and when one of them goes to trial, and the videotape is played in court, and replayed countless times on YouTube, mobsters on both sides of the border will cringe at seeing what then-acting Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde called an "extraordinary achievement for law enforcement."

Thanks for posting it! Very much interesting story by Edwards.

[Cheech]

All about canada. What a dissapointment. Might as well write aboit chicago.
Skinny guy kn trial this week and nothing. Ugh

Action is not always in the USA, when it pertains to the Mob!

Canada might as well be in Nicaragua as far as I'm concerned. i know you're into and you're a gentleman bu i have 0 interest. a Philly mob boss is in trial in nyc. unless you're a retard I think its obvious what people would wanna read about.

[Cheech]

I wonder if Merlino wanted to call Capeci as an expert witness as well, he did with Anastasia and Schratwieser and now neither are covering the case.

possible.

[Laurentian]

All about canada. What a dissapointment. Might as well write aboit chicago.
Skinny guy kn trial this week and nothing. Ugh

Action is not always in the USA, when it pertains to the Mob!

Canada might as well be in Nicaragua as far as I'm concerned. i know you're into and you're a gentleman bu i have 0 interest. a Philly mob boss is in trial in nyc. unless you're a retard I think its obvious what people would wanna read about.

Have a good day Cheech!

[MichaelGiovanni]

is it necessary to quote a whole article just to say nice article???

[Frank]

All about Canada. What a disappointment. Might as well write about Chicago.
Skinny guy on trial this week and nothing. Ugh

I thought it was very interesting. Alot has gone down in Canada in the last 10 years. More hits that's for sure. Typical east coaster, thinks the whole world revolves around them.

[Cheech]

All about Canada. What a disappointment. Might as well write about Chicago.
Skinny guy on trial this week and nothing. Ugh

I thought it was very interesting. Alot has gone down in Canada in the last 10 years. More hits that's for sure. Typical east coaster, thinks the whole world revolves around them.

eat a dick.

[SonnyBlackstein]

where they ran restaurant and flooring and décor companies.

His house looked like shit.


Thanks for the post HB, I thought it an interesting read.
Could anyone post the pics? Interested in Luppino primarily.

Cheers

[Frank]

Let's hear the same no old Merlino news we have been reading for weeks and months. Obviously there is nothing new to report.

[NJShore4Life]

All about Canada. What a disappointment. Might as well write about Chicago.
Skinny guy on trial this week and nothing. Ugh

I thought it was very interesting. Alot has gone down in Canada in the last 10 years. More hits that's for sure. Typical east coaster, thinks the whole world revolves around them.

Wait a second , the world doesn’t revolve around the East Coast?!?