The Sixth Family (64 page)
Authors: Lee Lamothe
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of police allegations concerning the Sixth Family’s fulsome ranks is that it has a “Lawyer’s Branch,” one of its most protected, secretive and valued divisions. Police claim that practicing lawyers are involved in the family’s enterprises to such an extent that a small proportion of them is considered by investigators to be a distinct branch of the organization. Police believe that the main cells of the organization each have their own designated lawyers. This would be a key distinction from other criminal organizations that maintain above-board but ongoing professional relationships with lawyers. Investigators suspect that the legal branch is not acting solely as judicial participants. There are no fewer than 11 lawyers from different law firms in Quebec that have raised police suspicions. Another has been identified by police as working closely with the family’s business in Ontario. They have played varying roles in the family’s enterprises, police suggest. But by no means are all lawyers who have acted for members of the Sixth Family implicated in improper activities; in fact, most are not.
One lawyer is dubbed “the Messenger” by police investigators. They say he carries messages: for instance, from Montreal he went to New York City; from New York City he went to Toronto; from Toronto he went to a jail north of the city. Along the way, the Quebec attorney spoke softly and passed along advice and warnings, according to police. He spoke to members of the Sicilian faction and other members of the Bonanno crew in New York, many of them in jail or out on bail, an investigator said. In Toronto he met with lawyers representing the Sixth Family’s associates who were facing charges in that city. In a visitor’s room in an Ontario prison, police say he met with a senior member of the Caruana-Cuntrera Family.
Police have found that lawyer-client privilege is being used as a prime defense by the Sixth Family. One lawyer, police have marveled, seems to have the job of sitting in on family meetings, bringing down the veil of legal privacy to discussions, as his daily activity. The lawyers’ jobs are often simple: keep the lines of communication open, and prevent Vito’s name and affairs from being brought up in court. Combative, aggressive men facing organized crime charges have meekly made the best deal they could and pleaded guilty, at the behest of Montreal. One suspect, believing he could beat drug charges, told his own lawyer to tell a certain Quebec lawyer that he had a good shot in court.
“This isn’t about him,” the Quebec lawyer allegedly told the accused man’s counsel. “This is about the big guy. Don’t make beating the charge the saddest day of your client’s life.”
Informants have talked about investing money through a law firm, about the office being used as a safe meeting place for critical discussions and about escrow accounts being used to launder drug money. Sometimes a lawyer is present for a meeting; at other times he absents himself to another room. Wiretaps on Sixth Family targets that have made their way into the court record have captured loose talk of questionable relationships with some of their lawyers. One gangster spoke of trying to pay his lawyer for certain services but being told the lawyer could not take the cash; the lawyer then said he could sure use a new computer. Others speak of using lawyers to help in getting false travel papers, to unearth personal information about people and other irregular duties. There was the lawyer who was allegedly involved in receiving the payment from the Toronto car dealer on Vito’s behalf. That the substantial sum was returned when the businessman raised the possibility of exposing the lawyer’s involvement suggests the value placed on the branch’s secrecy.
Some other clues have emerged. Meetings allegedly about large cocaine shipments during which José Guede, a Montreal lawyer, was present are outlined in a Montreal police report filed in open court.
(The charges against Guede were later dropped.) Similarly, the odd connections between Ramon Fernandez, Vito’s man in Toronto, and lawyer Carmine Iacono emerged during the Project R.I.P. prosecution. Earlier, Joe Lagana, a lawyer for Vito, and three junior lawyers from the same firm, pleaded guilty to laundering drug money after the RCMP’s sting operation at the money exchange house.
“The lawyers are a tricky part of getting at the Rizzuto family,” an organized crime investigator said. “When we’re up on the wires [running wiretaps], the minute we know it’s a lawyer, we have to minimize [shut the recorders off].” With Vito and his key administrators keeping so many lawyers around them, that leads to a lot of minimizing.
“We’re in a Catch-22 situation,” said another officer. “If we want to put in an affidavit [requesting a judge’s permission to intercept phone conversations] on a lawyer, we have to say that we have reason to believe that the lawyer is involved in crime. But you don’t have that evidence because you can never listen in on their conversations. We need someone to come forward and tell us that they have evidence of a crime so we can move forward.”
Several senior and experienced police investigators say they suspect lawyers are used in a number of different ways to thwart police monitoring of conversations.
“If you are on the wires and a lawyer comes into the conversation, the authorization says you have to cut out. The lawyer comes on the phone and clearly identifies himself as a lawyer and then says, ‘OK, now turning to the case you and I are involved with.’ And you have to stop listening.
You have to stop
. If the guy is involved in crime, we don’t get to hear it,” said an officer involved in extensive investigation of Sixth Family targets.
You have to stop
. If the guy is involved in crime, we don’t get to hear it,” said an officer involved in extensive investigation of Sixth Family targets.
Some phone numbers are known by police to be a number for a lawyer’s office and so officers realize a call is likely being made to a lawyer before any conversation even takes place. More often than not, officers turn off the wire without even waiting for a connection in a scrupulous bid to adhere to the court authorization allowing the wiretap which explicitly forbids intercepting calls between lawyers and their clients. Some officers believe, however, that this situation is being exploited. Investigators say some lawyers are registering cellular telephones in their names and then giving the phone to members or associates of the Sixth Family to use.
“You now have a bad guy carrying the phone of a lawyer. These guys know we can’t listen to a lawyer. We don’t want to taint the case so we cut out when the call is made,” said an investigator. In the old days, officers might listen to conversations they should not be hearing and then erase the tapes later and pretend it never happened. In a digital age where the calls are exhaustively logged and recorded, there is a permanent record that cannot be hidden.
“They’ll know if we breach the court order. Is it worth it? No. It is extremely frustrating,” said an officer. At all times, the poor track record of previous investigations against Vito looms large.
Officers also suspect that some lawyers do third-party transfer of telephone calls. A target of an investigation may call a lawyer, engage in a conversation that would be covered by lawyer-client privilege and then—when they are pretty sure police would have cut out of the conversation—transfer the call to a third person, to allow them to engage in an unmonitored chat.
“We need some help from the Justice Department,” said an investigator. “We need some ability in certain cases to listen in and see, to just see if it is a legitimate lawyer-client call or something else.”
As the new millennium dawned, Vito headed an unprecedented criminal organization, the likes of which Canada had never seen. As law enforcement beat back the Five Families in New York, the Sixth Family, safely operating from its base in Canada, steadily expanded its wealth and position. Those two opposite trajectories—the near collapsing of the American Mafia organizations and the growth of the Rizzuto organization—have seen the Sixth Family eclipse the families of the New York Mafia.
It has forged an organization few criminal cartels in any of the Americas can overshadow.
Even with all that police were learning about the Sixth Family and its power, wealth and substantial holdings, there were still many secrets; and many surprises to come.
CHAPTER 37
MONTREAL, JANUARY 20, 2004Wearing a bathrobe pulled over his pajamas, Vito Rizzuto followed his wife to the front door of their Montreal home after a sharp knock woke them at precisely 6:15 a.m. Outside, Sergeant-Detective Pietro Poletti and Detective Nicodemo Milano, both officers with the Montreal city police, stood on the wide front porch of the Rizzutos’ immense Tudor-style mansion at 12281 Antoine-Berthelet Avenue.
With its impressive cut-stone facade, three-port garage and leaded window panes, the house, near the waterfront of the Rivières des Prairies, is an enviable sight. Poletti and Milano, two dedicated Italian-Canadian officers who had worked on the force’s organized crime squad, had maintained an interest in investigating the Mafia despite the force’s preoccupation with the warring motorcycle gangs. It was more reward for their efforts than strategic necessity that saw these two selected as the ones to knock on Vito’s door that morning. Lurking nearby were four uniformed police officers discreetly placed a little farther from the house in idling squad cars; Montreal police were making an effort to ensure the arrest was handled with civility, but were not prepared to risk it becoming an ignoble spectacle.
The two detectives politely greeted Giovanna Rizzuto, Vito’s wife, at the door when she opened it a crack. They apologized for the early intrusion and then explained to Vito, in English and in French, that he was being arrested and charged in connection with three murders, based on indictments issued in New York. Twenty-two years and eight months after the May 5, 1981, slayings of Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato, Philip “Philly Lucky” Giaccone and Dominick “Big Trinny” Trinchera, U.S. authorities were formally alleging that Vito, now a 57-year-old grandfather of five, was the one who led the way out of the Brooklyn social club’s closet and started the massacre.
Vito did not seem surprised by the news, or even by the early morning interruption. He was cooperative, at all times acting the gentleman. His wife remained composed. Poletti accompanied him to his bedroom to allow him to dress. Vito picked out a camel-colored turtleneck, dress pants and a sports jacket, eschewing a tie, apparently aware that ties are removed from prisoners before being placed in police cells for fear they will be used to commit suicide. Within 15 minutes, Vito was inside an unmarked police car with the pair of detectives and on his way to a police holding cell.
After his booking, Vito was whisked to court; the discretion with which he was removed from his home had by now evaporated. Word of the arrest had spread quickly in Montreal and it was with lights flashing and sirens wailing that a convoy of police cars sped past a growing sprawl of television cameras and newspaper photographers who jostled for a better view of the captured don. At his perfunctory three-minute appearance in Montreal’s large, modern courthouse that afternoon, a tanned Vito listened somberly to his lawyer, Loris Cavaliere, who asked the judge for more time to study the U.S. government’s extradition papers. Outside court, Cavaliere described his client as “very confident” and said a decision had not yet been made on whether to seek bail while fighting extradition. Vito was then promptly returned to his cell.
Vito was the only Canadian arrested that day. In New York, however, FBI agents, state and city police were moving through the city’s boroughs arresting 26 people accused in 15 murders and murder conspiracies. It was a concerted effort to strike hard at the Bonanno Family, the culmination of considerable effort to eradicate one of the most famous of the Five Families of New York.
The U.S. government’s first target had been Vito Rizzuto.
BROOKLYN, DECEMBER 31, 2003Three weeks earlier, on New Year’s Eve, 16 members of a grand jury in New York’s Eastern District courthouse met and concurred with the prosecutor’s allegations, outlined in a seven-page indictment, that Vito Rizzuto—alone—should be charged with a racketeering conspiracy.
“At various times the defendant, Vito Rizzuto, was a soldier or associate in the Bonanno Family,” the indictment alleged, stating that from February 1, 1981, through December 2003, Vito engaged with others in a pattern of racketeering activity affecting interstate and foreign commerce, namely the murders of the three captains. The indictment was then neatly signed by the jury foreman and the case against Vito assigned the court file number 03-CR-1382, a file that would later swell to magnificent size. An arrest warrant was issued against Vito that same day, signed by a Brooklyn judge who also issued a limited unsealing order, allowing the government to provide the indictment to the relevant U.S. and Canadian authorities for the purpose of pursuing Vito’s arrest and extradition. The arrest warrant commanded any authorized police officer to arrest Vito, but no officers got a chance to see it, let alone act on it. The warrant and indictment were immediately placed in a white 10-by-15-inch envelope, sealed, labeled
U.S.A. v. John Doe
and filed in court with instructions that it not be listed on the court’s public docket. Prosecutor Greg Andres then left to enjoy his New Year’s festivities.
U.S.A. v. John Doe
and filed in court with instructions that it not be listed on the court’s public docket. Prosecutor Greg Andres then left to enjoy his New Year’s festivities.
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