The Sixth Family (75 page)
Authors: Lee Lamothe
Three times the date of the planned sweep of arrests had to be postponed. There was much work still to be done, but time was clearly running out.
MONTREAL, AUGUST 30, 2006A Cadillac pulled to a stop at the intersection of Henri-Bourassa Boulevard East and Rodolphe-Forget Boulevard in Montreal’s Rivière-des-Prairies district, an ominous location for the Sixth Family—if they thought of such things—as it was where the body of Joe LoPresti, their close colleague and kin, had been discovered by police in 1992. Two men riding on a Japanese-made motorcycle pulled up beside the Cadillac shortly before 3:20 p.m.; the passenger, dressed in black and wearing a full motorcycle helmet that hid his face, hopped off and immediately opened fired into the passenger side of the car. The shooter then climbed back on the motorcycle and the pair sped away.
The driver, Mario Iannitto, was only slightly injured. Taking the brunt of the bullets was the Cadillac’s passenger, Domenico Macri, who died from his wounds. Macri, born in 1970, was a gifted and intelligent man who left a wife and young son. He was known to police as a Sixth Family confidant, an up-and-coming gangster from the Calabrian wing of the organization who, in 1993, pleaded guilty to possession of heroin. Of chief concern to the Sixth Family, however, was the fact that Macri was frequently Arcadi’s driver and bodyguard and at the time of his murder was, in fact, on his way to Arcadi’s house to collect him.
Within minutes, word spread among Macri’s Montreal colleagues as dozens of cell phones, already bugged by police, started chirping and bleating around the city.
“Yeah, bro, they shot D.M.,” Giordano told Del Balso, who was stunned by the news. Giordano could barely contain his shock. “He’s dead! He’s dead! What happened? What are we going to do now?”
Arcadi’s immediate reaction was that he must have been the intended target. He knew he had angered a rival by double-crossing him in a recent transaction. He wondered, aloud and in horror, about what might have happened had he been in the car with his family at the time of the attack. The Bar Laennec buzzed with activity as people came and went, whispering and hugging. Iannitto, the injured driver, was roused from his recovery and hauled in for questioning by leading Sixth Family soldiers. He was then summoned to meet directly with Renda, Sollecito, Arcadi, Giordano and Del Balso to give his account. Clearly, this was serious business. At a meeting in the Bar Laennec the following day, Sollecito, Renda and Arcadi met to discuss the murder.
“We are already starting to study the situation. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a big fucking problem,” Sollecito assured Arcadi. Renda said he would ask about the incident at a meeting he was having the next day with a man who he felt might have some answers. Arcadi, however, was anxious for action.
“Here we are, father, son and holy spirit,” Arcadi said, evoking the religio-criminal mindset of the Mafia. “I agree that it’s things that we have to reason out; things have to be measured, things have to be evaluated. But when it gets to a certain point, and we are touched by some stupidities, the discussions have to be short.”
Believing Arcadi to have been the intended target in the murder, Renda suggested he leave town. “See, what you gotta do now: find an island, take your wife and leave.” Arcadi was unsure. He did not like the idea of people thinking he was fleeing.
“I have to decide if I go or don’t go,” he said. “Maybe I go to Italy with my brothers.” He then declared that he would triumph in any war. “Nobody is going to get rid of me, but we are looking. We are looking for that pig; we are looking for him because he’s a sea of problem,” he said in frustration. “What do we do—us? What do we do—us—when one of
us
has been killed? To tell you the truth, we do what we have to.”
us
has been killed? To tell you the truth, we do what we have to.”
The visitation and funeral of Macri was a set-piece of Sixth Family solidarity. Macri’s family and friends mingled with the cream of the Montreal underworld as they gathered for two days of visitation at the Loreto funeral home on Boulevard des Grandes-Prairies, a swank parlor owned by members of the Rizzuto and Renda families. At Macri’s large funeral on September 5, 2006, at Marie Auxiliatrice Catholic Church, just a two-minute drive from where he had been shot, mobsters spanning the generations were out in force. Paolo Renda stood with his son, Charlie. Old-timer Agostino Cuntrera, who had helped murder Paolo Violi back in 1978, stood within arm’s reach of Frank Cotroni, Jr., the son of the last of the old Cotroni bosses to die. Vito’s son, Nick, was there. Lorenzo Giordano, looking smart in a black shirt, black tie and black suit jacket, walked beside Giuseppe Torre. Iannitto, the driver of Macri’s Cadillac, watched somberly, knowing how close he had come to also being in a casket. Francesco Del Balso was included as a participant in the service. Wearing a black leather coat over a black shirt unbuttoned at the neck, he was one of several who held a quivering white dove to be released into the heavens.
Despite the doves of peace, the Sixth Family was preparing for war. Police surveillance teams spotted Giuseppe Fetta, Danny Winton, Martinez Canas and Charles Edouard Battista—pegged by officers as Mafia bodyguards—as they checked out and tested a silenced pistol in a garage, police say. Battista fired a shot into the ground to test the efficiency of the silencer. Police saw Battista give a machine gun to Fetta, while putting together a second automatic weapon. An arsenal was assembled: two AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles, a machine gun, a shotgun, bulletproof vests and ammunition.
Del Balso called Streit Manufacturing, an armored vehicle company north of Toronto, and told a sales agent he needed a “high-level” vehicle that was “full bullet proof” and available immediately. He wanted a certified protection rating of B-5, which would stop bullets from an AK-47, have a grenade-proof floor and inserts in the tires that allowed it to drive on flats. Del Balso rejected a bone-white Cadillac as being “too flashy.” After hearing the other options, Del Balso said he would take two sport utility vehicles, a Toyota 4Runner and a Nissan Armada, provided they were dark-colored and available immediately.
The senior Sixth Family members started traveling with bodyguards. Men with guns were stationed in cars outside the Consenza. Guns seemed to be on everyone’s mind and never far from reach. Del Balso and one of his bodyguards, Ennio Bruni, compared weapons one day inside the Bar Laennec.
“What you have?” Del Balso asked.
“A .38,” Bruni replied.
“That fucking old cop [gun]” Del Balso said dismissively. Bruni was a fan of the weapon.
“That’s the best one, that’s the best one,” Bruni said, showing how it handled. “Like this. Look! How you gonna miss? It’s dead. You crank it one time.” A loud shot rang out.
Del Balso was impressed: “That’s what I want.”
Police fretted about the increasing signs of violence. Senior officers felt that Project Colisée needed to wrap up soon or their cameras and microphones would be recording a bloodbath. There were also signs that some police targets were restless in other ways.
MONTREAL AND LAVAL, NOVEMBER 6, 2006A “For Sale” sign at a mansion in Laval’s tony Val-des-Brises development was noticed by investigators two days after it was hammered into the immaculately landscaped front lawn. With an in-ground pool, hardwood floors, doors imported from Italy, heated ceramic tiles in the fully finished basement and a superb fireplace in the living room, the home was called a “a real jewel” by the Realtor, with a selling price of $999,000 to match. The house was owned by Giuseppe Torre, who police say managed the Sixth Family’s drug importation schemes through Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport. When Torre and his wife bought it in 2004, a year when the couple declared a combined income of $87,384, the house had already come to the attention of tax investigators.
About 10 agents with the Canada Revenue Agency had been added to the Project Colisée team to help the government track down and secure assets of the top targets. Officers watching their secret videos knew the look of joy on the faces of the bosses as they collected their cash. They knew that loyalty and blood made the Sixth Family strong but revenue was what made it happy.
“I can tell you one thing, if you want to discourage organized crime people and let them know clearly that Canada is not a good place to do business, seize their assets,” said RCMP Deputy Commissioner Pierre-Yves Bourduas. “These people get involved in organized crime above all to acquire assets.”
The lavish home that appeared to be beyond the means of the Torres’s incomes was not the only incongruence tax agents found. Torre and his wife, a former Air Canada flight attendant, had claimed almost $100,000 in personal expenditures in 2001 on declared combined income of $30,562. Credit card receipts showed that $1,902 had recently been spent on lingerie at Victoria’s Secrets. There were painful hair transplants for Torre—more than a thousand grafts; second-row seats at the World Cup in Germany; trips to New York and Alberta to see hockey games; flights to Acapulco, Mexico City, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Los Angeles. There were gambling binges—on a single day Torre lost $100,000 on sports bets. Despite the luxury, his wife complained about having to drive a BMW M3 because Torre refused to buy her a Porsche.
Similar contrasts were found when the tax agents looked at Nick Rizzuto. In 2001, for instance, Nick was a pensioner living on $26,574 in old age security and income from his investment portfolio, according to his tax returns. Yet he lived in a mansion, had a condo in Milan, almost $2-million in blue chip stocks, cruised around in a 1987 Jaguar XJ12 and a 2001 Mercedes E430 and pampered his wife, Libertina, with furs and jewels. And while Nick and Libertina did not list any off-shore accounts in their tax returns, investigators believed they had more than $5-million in Swiss banks. Nick’s investment accounts showed cash injections from the money-laundering capital of Panama. A constant fear haunted investigators that their targets would liquate their assets and move the money beyond the government’s reach.
“Nick Rizzuto could, without any constraints whatsoever, liquidate his investments that he holds at RBC Dominion Securities, National Bank Financial and National Bank of Canada by transferring his assets to Panama,” Jean-Pierre Paquette, one of the tax investigators, wrote in an affidavit filed in court.
What was of most concern for the Project Colisée team, however, was the “For Sale” sign on Torre’s home. When they looked at his other assets they found that two income properties, rental units owned by Torre and his wife, were also on the market.
“Giuseppe Torre is actually in the process of emptying his assets and his real estate holdings,” tax investigator Benoit Martineau wrote in an affidavit. The liquidation came just as police were winding down Project Colisée and planning arrests. Could it mean there had been another leak? Were the subjects of their investigation preparing to flee?
Just a few weeks before, Del Balso had left for Acapulco, causing some concern. Upon his return to Montreal, his luggage was checked by border agents at the airport. Del Balso mocked their efforts. He could “buy this fucking airport if he felt like it,” he quipped.
“You’re wasting your time checking me out when all the drugs in the world are passing under your nose,” he said. He should know, officers thought.
Investigators worked frantically with federal prosecutors to sort out who they could charge, who would be arrested for what and who would be let go, perhaps for another day. With Vito facing American justice, he was, for the moment, no longer a Canadian concern. The sprawling lists of hundreds of suspects began to be whittled down.
There were the senior leaders—Nick Rizzuto, Paolo Renda, Rocco Sollecito and Francesco Arcadi—who police claim orchestrated and profited from a vast array of criminal enterprises. There were the street bosses—Lorenzo Giordano and Francesco Del Balso—who allegedly supervised the activities of the family. There were 38 people allegedly working to smuggle drugs into Canada through the Montreal airport, including Giuseppe Torre, the suspected manager of the ring, a female customs officer with the Canada Border Services Agency and a dozen airline and airplane food service workers. There were others alleged to have arranged cocaine importation from South America and the Caribbean by way of shipping containers, including another female border guard. There were 10 people alleged to be running a large Internet betting service through a computer server located first in Belize and then moved in 2005 to the Kahnawake native reserve. (Court documents say they took in $391.9-million in less than a year.) There was a separate group of 24 men and women who allegedly exported marijuana to Florida through the Akwesasne reserve and brought money from its sale back into Canada. There were those accused of specific acts of violence and several bodyguards accused of firearms offenses.
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