by Lamothe, Lee
There is some irony in the outcome. Had Vito not been arrested and extradited to the United States, he would surely have been arrested in the Project Colisée sweep. Given the seriousness of the charges his family members and colleagues now face in Canada, and the apparent strength of the government’s evidence, Vito could well be back on the streets of Montreal before many of those charged only in Canada.
It is safe to say that although he did not beat the charge this time, he certainly beat the odds.
As Vito’s father and the others face the start of their legal battles in Canada, Vito is settling into life as a prisoner in America. His lawyers had requested that Vito be placed in Ray Brook prison in upstate New York, just 115 miles south of Montreal, to allow easy visits from his family. Instead, from Brooklyn’s crowded Metropolitan Detention Center, he was flown to a prison transfer facility in Oklahoma and then, some days later, to his assigned prison: the medium-security Florence Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado, 1,945 miles from home.
ROME, OCTOBER 23, 2007
Just when Vito was settling in to the relatively anonymous routine of a federal inmate, Italian authorities gathered in Rome to make an announcement that would again thrust him into the headlines around the world: Bankers, businessmen, investment brokers and a man linked to the royal family of Italy were arrested in Europe, accused of being part of a prodigious underworld financial empire. In a series of raids in Italy, Switzerland and France, police froze $730-million worth of assets, seized 22 companies and charged 17 men. The group used several firms listed on German and American stock markets, including one registered in Vancouver and linked to gold mines in Canada and Chile, authorities alleged.
The controlling mind behind it all, authorities said, was Vito Rizzuto. Once again Italian authorities issued a warrant for his arrest as the boss of a Mafia association, and expressed a desire to have him extradited to face trial in Italy. Arrest warrants were also issued against Vito’s father, Nick, and the inner core of the Sixth Family: Paolo Renda, Frank Arcadi and Rocco Sollecito. It was not lost on investigators that all of these men were currently in custody.
“We believe that even from jail they are able to control the organization,” said Silvia Franzè, with the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia in Rome. “We blocked a lot of bank accounts and money. We have seized many companies and hundreds of millions of Euros all around the world because we believe that behind these companies is Vito Rizzuto. We found there were cells here in Italy controlled by Vito Rizzuto. We found out the links between the chiefs of those cells and the companies allegedly involved in financial crimes and in acquiring land for development.”
Also arrested was Mariano Turrisi, 53, the president and founder of Made in Italy Inc., an import-export marketing group. He is heard on wiretaps speaking with Vito in 2002 and 2003, police said. Turrisi’s arrest is particularly noteworthy—he was the senior deputy of a political movement founded by Prince Emanuele Filiberto, an heir to the Italian throne when the monarchy ended in 1946. The political movement, called “Values and Future” in English, was founded when Prince Filiberto returned from exile in 2002 after a constitutional amendment allowed male members of the royal family, called the Royal House of Savoy, to re-enter Italy.
It all presented a decidedly white-collar face of the Mafia. Links to such people show the level of influence that the Rizzuto name carries around the world, police said.
Also among those charged in Italy were: Roberto Papalia, the controversial Vancouver businessman and Rizzuto associate, who was arrested in Milan; Beniamino Zappia, who decades earlier had helped the Rizzutos move money through Lugano banks, was also arrested in Milan; and Felice Italiano, a LaSalle, Quebec businessman who had charges dropped against him more than a decade ago after one of Canada’s largest drug seizures. Italiano owns Ital-Peaux, a Quebec company that exports raw animal hides. Italian authorities allege Italiano used animal hides to mask the smell of narcotics from drug-sniffing dogs. He was on holiday in Rome with his wife when police arrested him in his hotel room just two hours before his return flight to Canada. Other Canadians and Italians are still wanted in the case.
Italian legal documents in the case dramatically portray Vito as a global superboss. The Rizzutos “gave birth to a transnational society” that worked to unite the Italian mafias and create “overseas cells,” a document from the Rome anti-Mafia prosecutor’s office alleged. The organization sought to “manage and control the economic activities connected to the acquisition of contracts in public works” and to “commit a series of crimes—killings, international drug trafficking, extortion, frauds, smuggling, stock-market manipulation, insider trading and criminal transfer of securities.”
For the Sixth Family, bad news kept rolling in.
The sentencing of Vito Rizzuto in the United States, the arrests of so many of his colleagues in Canada and the uncertainty over pending charges in Italy presents a serious and significant setback for the Sixth Family, the likes of which it has never before had to overcome. The organization apparently had a contingency plan in place to ensure a smooth transition should Vito or another senior leader be removed from the game. The Project Colisée recordings show its robust “table of five” leadership model. It is doubtful, however, that there was much anticipation of such deep Canadian losses following so soon on the heels of Vito’s arrest. The organization is significantly weaker. The dismantling of several of its lucrative revenue streams and the underworld embarrassment of being so thoroughly penetrated by police compound its losses. The evidence gathered by Project Colisée investigators will haunt Montreal mobsters for years, with those compromised by their visits to the Club Social Consenza but not arrested feeling vulnerable and wondering what might befall them in the future. The talk of Project Colisée 2 and 3 will be making crooks and mobsters nervous from coast to coast.
All is not lost for the Sixth Family, however.
There are many important, respected and skilled members of several clans in the Sixth Family organization left untouched by the arrests. Of the 205 subjects tracked by Project Colisée officers—of which approximately 130 were designated as primary and secondary targets—only 91 actually faced arrest when the probe wrapped up. Some of those who remain free were considered by investigators to carry significant leadership responsibility and authority. Vito’s associated clans and allies in Toronto and some in Vancouver continue to operate. Although some cash, drugs, guns, houses and other assets were seized by police in Project Colisée, the Sixth Family’s vast wealth remains largely undisturbed. And, perhaps most important, none of the dozen or so men and women labeled by police as forming the “new generation” of the Sixth Family were arrested.
The clans, while made up of people, are held together by bonds that give the organization a tensile, almost irresistible strength. Like the octopus the Mafia is often compared to, new tentacles appear whenever old ones are lost. The arrest of a single player, even one with Vito’s obvious ability, charisma, respect and incomparable contacts will be but a speed bump in a history that stretches back more than a century. The Sixth Family, in its historical battle for survival, is greater than any single leader and greater, even, than any of the individual clans it encompasses. The family has proved itself to be a durable entity, much like a resilient counterculture or a virus. New players—many of them the children of current members of its inner circle—are already being groomed for their roles and will one day emerge, ready to carry on the cult-like criminal traditions they have been born into; just as the Famiglia Manno became the Rizzuto organization which became the Sixth Family. Who knows which of the clan names will become dominant in the years to come?
Removing Vito Rizzuto from the leadership of the Sixth Family is not like cutting the head off a beast. It is more like yanking a clump of hair from its head. The rest of the strands remain, grow and prosper; the spot left by the absent strands soon overgrown.
And eventually forgotten.
PRINCIPAL SOURC
ES AND REFERENCES
PROLOGUE:
The murder of the three captains is drawn from the trial testimony of a number of former Bonanno members who agreed to cooperate with the government, particularly that of Salvatore Vitale and Frank Lino, in U.S.A. v. Joseph Massino (02-CR-307, Eastern District of New York) in 2004 and U.S.A. v. Vincent Basciano (03-CR-929, Eastern District of NY) in 2006; internal FBI reports of earlier debriefings of the same men; “Record of the Case for the Prosecution,” filed in Quebec Superior Court in support of the U.S. request for extradition of Vito Rizzuto; autopsy results by the New York Medical Examiner’s Office; and visits to the locations involved. Early suspicion of Vito’s involvement comes from “La Cosa Nostra in Canada,” a Federal Bureau of Investigation internal report prepared in March 1985. The extent of Sixth Family holdings comes from multiple court files, internal American and Canadian law enforcement reports and interviews.
CHAPTER 1:
Information on Cattolica Eraclea and Agrigento comes from several visits from 2004 to 2006. Additional details were provided by the Comune di Cattolica Eraclea, the town’s administration. The life story of Vito’s namesake grandfather was uncovered by the authors in old, previously secret—and sometimes crumbling—government files and old passenger manifests, including records from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Department of State, the National Archives and Records Administration and the Ispettorato Dell’Emigrazione in Italy. Other details come from Italian genealogical records; law enforcement reports and briefings from Italy, the United States and Canada; interviews and family charts.
CHAPTER 2:
The early Rizzuto activities in America, the arsons, the visa frauds and the messy demise of Vito’s grandfather come from several of the old files listed above, along with records from the County of Putnam District Attorney’s Office, the coroner’s report and contemporary news articles from The Putnam County Courier and The New York Times.
CHAPTER 3:
The Rizzutos’ early life comes from Italian genealogical records, law enforcement reports and briefings from Italy, the United States and Canada, passenger manifests, interviews and family charts. “The Rothschilds of the Mafia on Aruba” by Tom Blickman (Transnational Organized Crime, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1997) was helpful. Details on the murder of the mayor and its fallout comes from court documents from the Corte di Assise di Agrigento and the Corte di Appello di Palermo, confidential Canadian police reports and contemporary news accounts in several Italian newspapers. The quote from the Agrigento judge comes from Mafioso by Gaia Servadio (Sever & Warburg Ltd., London, 1976).
CHAPTER 4:
The Sixth Family’s relocation comes from records of the Canada Border Services Agency and other law enforcement agencies, including a private briefing by the RCMP on the Sixth Family and a dossier on Vito prepared by Montreal police filed in Quebec Court of Appeal, June 29, 2004 (No. 500-10-002800-041), translated from French. Further details come from Port of Halifax records held by the National Archives of Canada. Cross-border travel by Sixth Family stalwarts comes from sources in the border security sector. Montreal’s early criminal milieu is drawn from a study of several files held by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the National Archives of Canada, law enforcement reports, interviews with both underworld figures and retired investigators and contemporary news accounts. A better understanding of the early organization of the Montreal mob, as well as direct quotes, come from author interviews with former senior mafioso Bill Bonanno in 2007. A huge number of documents on Carmine Galante were released by the FBI under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The Canadian Connection by Jean-Pierre Charbonneau (Optimum, Montreal, 1976) was an invaluable reference.
CHAPTER 5:
Description of the Grand Hôtel comes from visits to Palermo; the facility’s historical information is courtesy of hotel management. Details on the Mafia summits come from: testimony of Tomasso Buscetta, a Sicilian mafioso turned informant; law enforcement reports; the President’s Commission on Organized Crime Record of Hearing V, February 20-21, 1985, Miami, Florida; interviews with police analysts in several countries; and several dozen credible media reports. Octopus by Claire Sterling (Norton, New York, 1990) was helpful. French Connection details come from numerous court files and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration files. Galante’s drug dealing comes from court documents filed in U.S.A. v. William Bentvena, et al (319 F.2d 916, United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit) and R. v. Cotroni. Details on Vito’s early life in Montreal come from Vito’s admissions in U.S. court in 2007, police files, interviews and sworn testimony by Vito in R. v. Morielli (1995, Quebec Superior Court), translated from French. More information on Canadian involvement in the French Connection is in The Enforcer (HarperCollins, Toronto, 2004) by Adrian Humphreys.
CHAPTER 6:
The Boucherville arson comes from contemporary newspaper accounts supported by the criminal record of Vito and Paolo Renda. The Sixth Family’s relationships come from confidential police and FBI files, interviews and documents filed in R. v. Caruana, et al (F-0383, Ontario Superior Court). Bill Bonanno’s arrest comes from police files, an interview with Bonanno, a newspaper account and photographs of the event examined by the authors; Vito’s wedding and citizenship information from the Montreal police dossier; his pre-nuptial contract from documents filed in court; and Cammalleri family history from an internal report on the “Lake Muskoka Conference” by police intelligence officers in 1985 and a 1986 RCMP report entitled “Traditional Organized Crime, Ontario.” The NK 2461-C wiretap comes from police files; information on more recent phone calls to Montreal by Joe Bonanno is from an interview with a retired federal agent and confirmed by Bill Bonanno.
CHAPTER 7:
The Marchettini shake-down, some details on Paolo Violi’s interaction with New York and the Quebec crime commission quotes come from the report of the Commission d’enquête sur le crime organize (CECO) (Éditeur official du Québec, Quebec City, 1977). Details on Greco’s life come from interviews with Bill Bonanno and police and FBI files; details on his death come from contemporary newspaper accounts. The New York Times quote is from a May 9, 1967 story. FBI, DEA and RCMP files added context to the Sicilian-Calabrian feud; interviews with current and retired investigators and underworld figures were also helpful.
CHAPTER 8:
Understanding the downfall of Violi, here and elsewhere, was aided by discussions with Robert Menard, a retired Montreal policeman who lived undercover above the Reggio Bar for six years in an operation that placed and monitored secret microphones. Violi’s trip to Italy is documented in Men of Dishonor by Pino Arlacchi and Antonino Calderone (William Morrow & Co., New York, 1992). Nick Rizzuto’s cross-border travels are from border sources. Violi’s drug interest comes from court documents in Reggio Calabria, Italy, in Sentenza contro Paolo De Stefano + 59, filed in 1979, translated from Italian. Some information on Settecasi’s intervention and interest in drugs, here and elsewhere, comes from the Tribunale Civile e Penale di Palermo in Lucia Beddia + 12, filed in 1996, and Canadian police reports.
CHAPTER 9:
The visits to Montreal by New York intermediaries are documented in the CECO reports and Italian court files, and captured for posterity on the Reggio Bar recordings. The testimony from Cuffaro comes from Italian and American intelligence reports from the “Big John” case. Information on the Arcuris comes from interviews with police and family sources, FBI reports and Italian and American court documents, including U.S.A. v. Baldassare Amato. The chat between Nick and Violi is from the Reggio recordings.
CHAPTER 10:
Activities in Venezuela come from: a visit to the locations involved; interviews with officials in Venezuela, the United States, Italy and Canada; police and law enforcement files; the Buscetta testimony; and three volumes of debriefings of mob turncoat Oreste Pagano, including Disclosure Re: Statement of Oreste Pagano (April 7, 1999); Project Omertà: Pagano Interview/Statement (September 21, 1999
); and Transcript, Project Omertà (November 18, 1999). Major Lauretti’s remarks are from his testimony in Ontario Provincial Court on September 25, 1998, observed by the authors. Other information comes from police files and interviews.
CHAPTER 11:
Recent RCMP files, CECO reports, the Reggio Bar recordings and FBI documents released under the FOI Act were helpful in understanding the Calabrian-Sicilian feud. Sphinx quote is from Blood Brothers by Peter Edwards (Key Porter, Toronto, 1990) and archival footage was useful in describing people and events.
CHAPTER 12:
Information on Licata’s murder and the changes in Brooklyn’s underworld comes from testimony of turncoat Luigi Ronsisvalle at the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, 1985; contemporary media accounts; court files; interviews; and a visit to locations involved. Information from Kenneth McCabe, a legendary New York organized crime investigator who recently passed away, was helpful. Vitale’s, Lino’s and Frank Coppa’s words come from their testimony in 2004. The “highest American boss” quote comes from interviews with an underworld source by the authors in 2005. Falcone’s quotes, here and elsewhere, come from Men of Honour by Giovanni Falcone (Warner, London, 1993) and Tripodi’s quotes, here and elsewhere, from Crusade by Tom Tripodi and Joseph P. DeSario (Brassey’s, McLean, 1993). Last Days of the Sicilians by Ralph Blumenthal (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989) was also helpful.
