Cotroni crime family

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Cotroni crime family
Family founder Vincenzo Cotroni
Founded1940s
FounderVincenzo Cotroni
Founding locationMontreal, Quebec, Canada
Years active1940s–Present
TerritoryQuebec and Ontario
EthnicityItalians as "made men" and other ethnicities as associates
ActivitiesRacketeering, drug trafficking, murder, illegal gambling, corruption, extortion, theft, loan sharking, fraud
AlliesBonanno crime family
RivalsBlass gang
Rizzuto crime family

The Cotroni crime family, originally Cotrone

organized crime syndicate (or 'Ndrina) based in Montreal, Quebec. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers the family a branch of the Bonanno crime family of New York City.[2]

The organization was established in the 1940s by Vincenzo Cotroni, a Calabrian immigrant from Mammola. Its territory once covered most of southern Quebec and Ontario.[2] An internal war broke out between the Calabrian and Sicilian factions of the family in the late 1970s, which resulted in the death of acting captain Paolo Violi and his brothers. This allowed the Sicilian Rizzuto faction, a Mafia crime family, to overtake the Cotroni's Calabrian faction as the preeminent crime family in Montreal. Vincenzo died of cancer in 1984, followed by his brother Frank in 2004.

History

Royal Canadian Mounted Police chart of the Bonanno crime family's crew (decina) in Montreal

In 1924, Vincenzo Cotroni immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, with his two sisters, Marguerita and Palmina, and his brother Giuseppe; his two other brothers, Frank and Michel, were later born in Montreal.[3] In the late 1920s, Cotroni attended a wrestling school where his teacher, the French-Canadian professional wrestler Armand Courville, ended up joining the family.[4] Cotroni and Courville became infamous in Montreal for their roles in the "baseball bat elections" of the 1930s, working as enforcers for the Quebec Liberal Party and using baseball bats to threaten or assault voters opposed to the Liberals.[5] When the Union Nationale won the 1936 election, Cotroni and Courville switched their loyalties.[4] The two men forged political connections that ensured immunity from prosecution for decades afterwards.[4]

In the 1950s, the Cotroni family formed a strong connection to the New York-based Bonanno crime family, which was beginning to control the majority of Montreal's drug trade.[6] In 1953, Carmine "Lilo" Galante, an influential member of the Bonanno family, arrived in Montreal and worked with Cotroni. Galante planned to make Montreal a pivotal location in the importation of heroin from overseas for distribution in New York and across the United States via the French Connection. Police also estimated that Galante was collecting gambling profits in Montreal worth about $50 million per year.[1] In April 1956, due to Galante's strong-arm extortion tactics, the Canadian government deported him back to the U.S.[7]

As is the norm with

Mezzogiorno (the south of Italy), but most unusually there was no rules against members from different regions, with Calabrians and Sicilians both serving in the Cotroni family.[8] In 1975, Dr. Alberto Sabatino of the Italian Polizia di Stato testified as an expert witness at the Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé (CECO) that the Cotroni family was "exceptional" in having Sicilians and Calabrians working together.[8] Sabationo testified: "Such a mixture of Calabrian and Sicilian gangsters does not occur in Italy".[8]

At the height of their power in the 1960s and 1970s, the Cotroni family was divided along geographical lines, with each

In the late 1960s, the Cotronis engaged in a violent feud with French-Canadian mobster

Magaddino family in Buffalo, but in reality much of the violence was caused by an upstart French-Canadian gang led by Blass that sought to challenge the dominance of the Cotroni family.[13] On 4 May 1968, two of Blass' men, Gilles Bienvenue and Albert Ouimet, were murdered, and on 7 May 1968, Blass associate Roger Larue was also killed.[13] In October 1968, Di Maulo shot Blass twice, who survived his wounds.[13]

Both Di Iorio and his deputy, Frank D'Asti, were very close to the Quebec Liberal Party.

Minister of Labour was considered to be a consolation prize by the two men, and Coté promised them that the new Attorney-General, Jérôme Choquette, would be friendly towards the Cotroni family.[14]

During the October Crisis of 1970, Cotroni was often mentioned in the manifestos of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), which accused the gangster of rigging elections on behalf of the Liberals and being one of the exploiters of the French-Canadian working class.[15] Cotroni did not welcome the attention that the FLQ manifestos, which were read on both the television and radio, brought to him.[15] After Laporte was kidnapped by the FLQ, D'Asti approached his aide, René Gagnon, offering to have the Cotroni family help police find the labour minister before the FLQ killed him.[15] Although the offer was accepted, Laporte was not rescued and his body was found stuffed into the trunk of an automobile.[15] In December 1970, policeman Robert Ménard successfully bugged the Reggio Bar, Violi's base of operations.[16] The recordings of an oblivious Violi revealed much about the operations of the Mafia in not only Canada, but also the U.S. and Italy as well.[17]

In the 1960s and 1970s, Cotroni used Obront to supervise a

tax fraud, sentenced to 20 months in jail and ordered to pay $683,046 in back taxes.[18]

In September 1974, Cotroni was subpoenaed to testify at the Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé and was imprisoned for contempt after the commissioners declared his testimony to be "voluntarily incomprehensible, disconnected, vague, hazy and equivalent to a refusal to testify".[20] Following Cotroni's imprisonment, Violi took over control of the family, and on 9 January 1975, Violi told Pietro Sciarra to go to New York to ask Philip "Rusty" Rastelli of the Bonanno family to appoint him the new boss of the Cotroni family.[20]

Mafia war in Montreal

Following his imprisonment, Cotroni transferred the day-to-day activities of the family to Violi, a capodecina together with Frank, Di Iorio and Greco.[21][22] Cotroni's role became more that of an adviser to Violi.[23][24] Greco led the Sicilian faction of the family until his death in 1972.[25][26]

Soon after, in 1973, a violent power struggle broke out between Sicilian and Calabrian factions in the family, notably aspiring Sicilian mob boss

Nicolò Rizzuto.[27][6][28] In 1976, the recordings made by Ménard over the previous six years were played in public at Commission d'enquête sur le crime organisé, which destroyed Violi's reputation.[29] Journalists André Cedilot and André Noel wrote: "The Mafia would never forgive him [Violi] for being so stupidly careless as to let a cop bug his place of business".[30] The Bonnano family, to whom the Cotroni family answered to, shifted their support from Violi to Rizzuto, whom they felt to be a more competent criminal.[31]

During the war in Montreal, Violi and his brothers were murdered along with others through the mid 1970s to the early 1980s, when the war ceased.[6][32][33] Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of the Toronto Star wrote: "Vic Cotroni was not one to buck New York and any hit on Violi had to be sanctioned from the United States". [31] By the mid 1980s, the Rizzuto crime family emerged as Montreal's pre-eminent crime family after the turf war.[2]

The Calabrian faction continued to operate with Frank Cotroni, who had been imprisoned from 1975 to 1979,

hitman. In 1986, Simard turned informant after his arrest, confessing to five murders and involvement with Cotroni. Cotroni was sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter in 1987.[36]

After Simard turned Crown's evidence following his arrest in Toronto, his replacement was the boxer Eddie Melo. Like Simard, Melo was in charge of bringing strippers and video game machines from Montreal to the Toronto area.[37] In the early 1990s, Melo took the lead in forging a cross-Canada alliance with the Commisso 'ndrina of Toronto and the East End Vancouver chapter of the Hells Angels.[38] The police surveillance teams observed Melo frequently having meetings in Toronto with the three Commisso brothers and Lloyd "Louie" Robinson, the sergeant-at-arms of the Hells Angels East End chapter.[38] Melo also often visited Vancouver, where he was greeted with much respect during his visits to the clubhouse of the East End chapter.[38]

Frank Cotroni died, of brain cancer, in August 2004, leaving the Rizzuto Sicilian faction as the most powerful crime family in Canada.[39]

On 4 November 2012, Joe Di Maulo, a longtime ally of the Cotroni family, was murdered outside his Montreal home.[40] Police believe his murder is part of an ongoing power struggle between the Sicilians and their rivals.[41]

References

  1. ^ a b Auger and Edwards The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime p.63.
  2. ^ a b c Lamothe & Humphreys, The Sixth Family, p.308
  3. ^ "Le parrain discret: vie et carrière de Vincenzo Cotroni" (in French). quebec.huffingtonpost.ca. 14 September 2014. Archived from the original on 8 November 2018. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
  4. ^ a b c Auger & Edwards 2004, p. 61.
  5. ^ Auger & Edwards 2004, p. 59.
  6. ^ a b c The Rizzuto family Archived 2013-07-23 at the Wayback Machine by Corinne Smith (January 6, 2011) CBC News Montreal
  7. .
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Schneider 2009, p. 257.
  9. ^ a b Schneider 2009, p. 257-258.
  10. ^ Auger & Edwards 2004, p. 170.
  11. ^ Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 270
  12. .
  13. ^ a b c d Schneider 2009, p. 270.
  14. ^ a b Schneider 2009, p. 258.
  15. ^ a b c d Auger & Edwards 2004, p. 172.
  16. ^ Edwards 1990, p. 97.
  17. ^ Cedilot & Noel 2012, p. 81.
  18. ^ a b c Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 262
  19. ^ Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 264
  20. ^ a b Schneider 2009, p. 267.
  21. ^ Auger and Edwards The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime p.195.
  22. ^ L'atentat, p. 65
  23. La Presse
    , 1er décembre 1973
  24. ^ Idem, p. 63
  25. ^ Lamothe, Lee. Humphreys, Adrian. The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto. pg.27–29 Archived 2014-06-22 at the Wayback Machine
  26. ^ Manning, George A, PH.D Financial Investigation and Forensic Accounting pg.214–215 Archived 2021-01-04 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ "The man they call the Canadian Godfather". National Post. February 26, 2001. Archived from the original on 11 April 2018. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  28. ^ Champlain, Pierre De. "Organized Crime". Archived from the original on 2010-01-21. Retrieved 2009-12-02.
  29. ^ Langton 2015, p. 72.
  30. ^ Cedilot & Noel 2012, p. 99.
  31. ^ a b Edwards 1990, p. 121.
  32. ^ "Canada's alleged Godfather pleads guilty" Archived 2012-11-07 at the Wayback Machine, Montreal Gazette, September 18, 2008
  33. ^ "Mob takes a hit" Archived 2008-03-23 at the Wayback Machine, Montreal Gazette, November 23, 2006
  34. ^ "Frank Cotroni dies of cancer". Canadian Press. 21 August 2004. Archived from the original on 27 December 2018. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
  35. ^ FBI linked Montreal mobster to alleged U.S. assassination plot Archived 2012-11-07 at the Wayback Machine, CanWest News Service, July 10, 2007
  36. ^ "Montreal crime family's last member dies at 72". theglobeandmail.com. 18 August 2004. Archived from the original on 31 October 2016. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
  37. ^ Auger & Edwards 2004, p. 141.
  38. ^ a b c Sher & Marsden 2003, p. 308.
  39. ^ Alleged crime boss Cotroni buried in Montreal Archived 2009-02-21 at the Wayback Machine, CTV News, August 22, 2004
  40. ^ Reputed Montreal crime boss Joseph Di Maulo killed in his driveway north of the city Archived 2012-12-25 at the Wayback Machine, National Post, November 5, 2012
  41. ^ Police fear Montreal mobster's murder may be start of bloody Mafia war Archived 2012-12-11 at the Wayback Machine, National Post, November 5, 2012

Books

Books

External links