The Sixth Family (58 page)
Authors: Lee Lamothe
In the months before Operation Springtime 2001 largely settled the matter, Vito was working to do with the Mafia what the Hells Angels had managed to accomplish with the bikers. The Hells Angels had recently accepted several veteran motorcycle gangs in Ontario into their fold, dramatically waiving their own rules on membership and granting full-patch membership status to all of the bikers in the independent gangs who agreed to bury their own gang colors. It had been a bold move that gave the Hells Angels coast-to-coast coverage of the prime drug markets of Canada. Vito wanted to do the same for the Mafia clans, uniting them all under his banner, a move that would give him unprecedented power and position.
In late January 2001, some of the province’s most plugged-in police investigators started hearing whispers of a gathering of Mafia clans from across the country. A meeting was either being called or had already been held north of Toronto as an apparent attempt to forge an alliance among quarreling Mafia clans from Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and possibly New York State. The aim was to present a united front to the internationally linked and newly unified biker gang.
“The Hells Angels are now in Ontario forming a unity with the Hells Angels in Montreal. Is that a threat to them? I’d say so,” said a Toronto police officer who investigates organized crime. “It seems it’s time for the Italians to put their differences aside, and if they perceive the bikers as a threat, then they have incentive,” he said of the Mafia clans. Police believed the meeting was chaired, or was planned to be chaired, by Vito. It was a strategic move to use the threat of the bikers as an excuse to let him have Ontario; as opposed to conquerer, he was branding himself as protector.
Despite the dense population of notable mobsters in the province of Ontario, clustered mainly in and around Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara Falls, there was a distinct leadership vacuum. On the last day of May 1997, Johnny “Pops” Papalia, who had thrown his lot in with the Magaddino Family in Buffalo early in life and parlayed it into a four-decades long career as one of Canada’s leading crime figures, had been shot dead. Papalia had, like Vic Cotroni in Montreal, struck a deal with an American Mafia organization to be their representative in Canada. It made him strong when the Buffalo mob was strong and he then went on to outlive his American contemporaries. The demise of Papalia, at the age of 73, left the province without a central mob figure. The Sixth Family was anxious to fill that void but, in keeping with its tradition, it acted with caution. Investigators could not shake the belief that the Sixth Family’s ambition played a role in the demise of Papalia, a murder preceded by the slaying of his man in Toronto, Enio Mora—at the hands of Sicilian mobsters—and followed by the slaying of Papalia’s man in Niagara Falls, Carmen Barillaro. It seemed a purge of the old American Mafia presence in Ontario, as had occurred in Montreal two decades before. (Giacinto Arcuri was charged with killing Mora, but was acquitted.)
The gunman who killed Papalia and Barillaro was caught and told police and the court that he was acting on the orders of the Musitano Family, a rival mob clan in Hamilton. Police suspicions over Sixth Family involvement, however, were not allayed when, in the middle of the night, investigators secretly tailed Pasquale “Pat” Musitano, the young boss of his family, to a restaurant in Woodbridge, north of Toronto. There, on October 23, 1997, exactly three months after Barillaro was murdered and five months after Papalia was killed, Musitano and his cousin, Giuseppe “Pino” Avignone, had a lengthy meeting with Vito and Vito’s hulking enforcer in Toronto, Gaetano “Guy” Panepinto. What, investigators wondered, was the connection?
Panepinto had long been a fixture on the Southern Ontario crime scene and had grown from a street rowdy into a middle-level player, but had difficulty leaving the adrenaline rush of thuggery behind; bombings, arsons, loan sharking and extortion were his stock-in-trade. His connections with professional hijacking crews made him a ready supplier of weapons, stolen cars, motorcycle parts, steroids, cocaine and other drugs.
“Guy was the go-to guy if you had something physical that needed to be done, or something with some risk attached. He was this huge motherfucker, but had a great smile. He knew everybody. The bikers loved him; the Italian guys always had a kind word for him. He wasn’t afraid to be a real criminal,” said a biker associate of Panepinto’s. At the same time, he was moving to a higher level of sophistication, establishing his own front companies and legitimate sources of income, including a Toronto franchise of Casket Royale, a storefront outlet in Toronto’s Little Italy that offered discount coffins and funeral merchandise. His caskets ran from $295 for thin pressboard to $4,900 for a bronze luxury model. He offered designer themes—such as denim-covered caskets with cowboy-themed decorations—and used, as a somber marketing ploy, an offer of “free” children’s caskets.
“Guy had a great sense of humor. When he opened the casket store he said he’d become his own best customer,” said a long-time underworld friend.
Panepinto quickly swore his sword to Vito. In Ontario, Panepinto joined a mix of old-time Sicilian Men of Honor, Calabrian gangsters, motorcycle gangs and other proven career criminals, who were attracted to Vito and his Sixth Family organization.
Vito was far from being alone in Ontario when he made moves on the province. The Sixth Family had many friends there: Vito’s in-laws, who, according to police, had long been a presence in Ontario under the leadership of Antonio Cammalleri, who was Vito’s wife’s uncle; Peter Scarcella, a Sicilian mobster to whom Vito had been introduced to back in the 1960s when Vito was courting his wife, who later asked Vito to be the godfather to his daughter and went on to become a mobster of note in Toronto; Giacinto Arcuri, who had fled from Cattolica Eraclea after the murder of the town’s mayor and kept close to Montreal and New York allies of both the Rizzutos and Gerlando Sciascia. Arcuri is a man of note to Toronto’s underworld, pegged by police as above even Scarcella within the Sicilian coterie. Other men who had made a name for themselves but had largely managed to avoid the scrutiny of police were also with Vito. And their old allies, the Caruana-Cuntreras, had also relocated to Ontario in the early 1990s, with Alfonso Caruana running his drug empire from his new base north of Toronto, where he and other family members bought homes and businesses.
Also in Ontario was Frank Campoli, who had married Vito’s wife’s cousin, who was a Cammalleri. Campoli was named in court as Vito’s “man in Toronto” in the Penway stock scam in Ontario in 1988, but he had greater business success with OMG Media Inc.
OMG, originally called Olifas Marketing Group, was a Toronto-area firm that in the late 1990s came up with a way to blend the recycling craze with paid advertising; large metal bins would be placed on street corners where passersby could deposit their recyclable bottles or fast-food containers, and dispose of litter. The containers would display advertising. OMG urged municipalities and cities to sign contracts that would permit placement of the bins on busy thoroughfares. The more bins, the higher the advertising revenues. For OMG, ads were crucial to its revenue. Up-front expenses were considerable in that the container bins had to be built and trucked to the agreed locations. Yet the pitch to cities and schools seemed oddly to favor those clients.
OMG normally paid its municipal and institutional clients approximately $10 for each container that it was allowed to place. OMG would then pay for the manufacturing of each bin (approximately $1,500 each), its shipping and installation costs, and then ongoing maintenance costs. In some cases, OMG was even responsible for collecting the weekly recyclables and refuse. In return, OMG was granted the right to sell and place advertisements on two faces of the bin. Most deals allowed the municipalities a certain number of bin faces for its own advertising, such as public-service announcements, for free.
OMG had signed agreements with the city of Montreal, and in Ontario, the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Markham and Windsor. It also moved into the educational market, placing boxes or signing agreements with universities, colleges and elementary schools, including McMaster University in Hamilton and the Toronto District School Board. In 2003, OMG signed its largest contract in the United States with the Board of Education for the City of New York. It was a deal to place some 2,700 bins on school property. OMG also looked abroad, working on agreements in Italy, Eastern Europe, Malaysia, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.
In its early days, OMG had several men involved in the business. Frank Campoli, Giancarlo Serpe and Salvatore Oliveti among them. Campoli was in contact with Vito Rizzuto on a weekly basis, according to police. Serpe had been seen by police meeting with many mobsters over the years, notably murdered mafioso Enio Mora. According to court documents, Serpe was “the last witness to have seen Mora alive.” Serpe was also seen with Giacinto Arcuri, who would later be charged and acquitted of killing Mora. OMG’s Quebec division was headed by Michael Strizzi, who had been a close personal friend of Vito’s for more than 20 years. These connections appear to have gone unnoticed by, or were of no concern to, city staff and politicians as OMG was negotiating its public contracts.
The pitch to the city of Toronto, the company’s largest Canadian contract, was backed by Joe Foti, a Liberal fundraiser who held considerable sway before his death. He was famous for his annual barbecue, which attracted notable politicians, including Jean Chrétien, then Canada’s Prime Minister. OMG also hired a high-powered lobbyist, Paul Pellegrini, president of the Sussex Strategy Group, to help attract federal government advertising. Pellegrini registered as a lobbyist on OMG’s behalf on December 19, 2001, to make telephone calls, arrange meetings and conduct “informal” communications with government departments, including Canadian Heritage, National Defence, Revenue Canada, and Public Works, Pellegrini said. (Pellegrini said his relationship with OMG was short-lived and neither he nor his firm retains any connection to the company.)
OMG’s proposal was well received in Toronto. Turning its back on a staff recommendation, the city’s public works committee voted to give OMG a 10-year contract without putting it out to public tender; this decision was later overturned by city council. When the bids from several companies were received, OMG was selected as the best. By 2003, it had placed 2,797 bins on Toronto’s streets, at an estimated cost to OMG of $4 million.
As the recycling trend became rooted in the public consciousness, the company positioned itself to profit. In 2003, OMG budgeted for $8 million in revenue. Its public relations efforts with city politicians and staff were working wonders. As Lou Gallucci, OMG’s vice-president at the time, said in a sworn affidavit: “OMG is dependent on the goodwill of the municipalities in which it operates, as OMG requires the consent and approval of the municipalities in order to provide its services.”
Altogether, Ontario was looking a lot friendlier to the Sixth Family than ever before. By October 2000 it had a fast-rising stake in the distribution of cocaine throughout Southern Ontario. With Johnny Papalia and the most powerful and volatile of his cronies out of the way, there seemed little appetite among the Ontario-based clans to give the Rizzutos much grief. The lucrative nature of their cooperation with the Hells Angels in Quebec bought them the immediate good graces of the independent biker gangs in Ontario that were being heavily courted by the Quebec Hells Angels.
Following the successful strategy his father had used in Montreal when the Sixth Family began to raise its voice against Paolo Violi and strengthened his claim through an alliance with the Caruana-Cuntrera clan, Vito searched for a strong group with an impeccable pedigree with whom to forge an alliance with in Ontario. Shunning the Sixth Family’s traditional fondness for keeping their affairs closely Sicilian, he found the perfect coupling in the Commisso family. Based around three brothers, Cosimo, Rocco Remo and Michele, the Commissos had immigrated to Toronto from Calabria in 1961 and were about as street strong in Toronto as any mob clan could expect. The stage seemed set for the Sixth Family to make its move.
From night clubs to fitness clubs, strip bars to fast-food outlets, drugs were being moved at the retail level in Toronto and surrounding cities, replicating the cocaine distribution system that had made Quebec gangsters rich. Legitimate businesses and corporate investments were in place and its Ontario manpower was not insignificant. The time had finally come for the Sixth Family to absorb its neighbor.
“Was it a takeover? Yes,” said one of the Toronto police’s top organized crime investigators. “That was their intention.”
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