A Quebec judge this morning accepted the joint suggestion of Crown and defence lawyers in agreeing to a four-year jail sentence for Mr. Rizzuto. But his two years spent in jail since his 2006 arrest count as double, meaning he is now a free man.
Mr. Rizzuto and five other men, alleged leaders in the Montreal Mafia, pleaded guilty last month to a raft of charges resulting from a lengthy police investigation.
The father of Vito Rizzuto, the reputed to head the Montreal Mafia, the elder Rizzuto was described as being in poor health and, despite his reputation, for having a minor role in the criminal organization.
Nicolo Rizzuto will have to report to a probation officer, and remains on probation for three years.
Four other leader in the Montreal underworld were handed sentences today of up to 15 years. All will serve no more than 11 years, however, due to their time already spent behind bars.
A fifth man returns to court next month.
The other men are Rocco Sollecito, Paolo Renda, Francesco Arcadi, Francesco Del Balso and Lorenzo Giordano.
During a four-year investigation, the RCMP penetrated the heart of the criminal organization, installing hidden cameras inside their headquarters.
According to RCMP affidavits, hundreds of kilos of cocaine were imported through Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, where baggage handlers, food-services employee and even customs agents were on the gang's payroll.
The allegations are outlined among more than 1,000 criminal counts filed in November 2006 against 90 people the police identified as associates and underlings of Vito Rizzuto.
The four-year investigation by several police forces culminated in a 700-officer raid in November 2006 across Quebec, as well as Halifax and Toronto where more than 70 people were arrested and homes and bank accounts were seized. About $3-million was also seized as proceeds of crime.
At the time the RCMP said police struck at the heart of one of the top criminal syndicates in Canada.
Police say the criminal organization had succeeded in infiltrating Montreal's airport and co-opting a dozen airport employees as well as a federal customs agent.
Mitchell Janhevich couldn't believe what he was seeing. Inside a noisy hotspot called The Joy Club one evening in May, 2003, the Montreal beat cop spotted – amidst the frenzy of lights and sound – five men huddled together in a VIP section. He immediately recognized one of them as Vito Rizzuto, who seemed engaged in a sort of gangster get-together. When Rizzuto and his friends left the club and climbed into a Mercedes Benz, Janhevich followed them in his cruiser and eventually pulled them over.
As Janhevich approached the Mercedes, a heated verbal exchange broke out between the passengers and the police officer. Soon, Rizzuto lost his temper, clambered from the car and stalked over to Janhevich. A tall man with hawkish features, Rizzuto confronted Janhevich and demanded: "Do you have any idea who I am?"
Rizzuto, one of Canada's most successful gangsters. "Teflon Don": Montreal mafia kingpin
Janhevich knew perfectly well who Vito Rizzuto is, although most Canadians would be hard-pressed to place the name. Which is surprising, given that Rizzuto is considered the "Teflon Don" of Canada, due to his success in evading conviction during the more than two decades he reigned over Montreal's underworld. In fact, Victor "Vito" Rizzuto is fairly unique in how he successfully merged old-world Sicilian Cosa Nostra sensibilities with modern-day management methods in creating and running his crime family.
Debonair, charming, with trademark swept-back iron hair, the 60 year-old Rizzuto has a healthy appetite for beautiful women, sports cars, mansions, golf and haute cuisine. He is one of the most successful gangsters this country has ever produced and, were it not for the fallibility of the dons of the American mafia, he would likely be a free man to this day.
Born into a prominant Sicilian mafia family
Rizzuto was bred to be a mafia prince. Born in 1946 in Cattolica Eraclea, a small village of 6,000 in the mountainous province of Agrigento in Sicily, Rizzuto is the oldest son of Nicolo "Nick" Rizzuto, a true "man of honour" – the stony-eyed hard cases who belong to the Sicilian Mafia.
When Vito was eight he and his family came to Canada, settling in Montreal, part of a wave of Sicilian mafioso who emigrated to this country in the 1950s and would shape the criminal underworld for decades to come. In those days, the New York-based Bonanno crime family considered Montreal part of its territory, largely because of the convenience of the city's port for offloading heroin shipments from Europe.
'Mafia Row' in Montreal - where the Rizzuto family home is located. Nick Rizzuto joined the Bonanno organization, running a tough crew of Sicilian gangsters and establishing himself as an up-and-comer in the Canadian mob. As he came of age, Vito followed in his father's footsteps. He became a Canadian citizen in 1966 and married Giovanna Cammelleri in a classic mob-style wedding ceremony attended by Montreal's gangster gentry. Two years later, the 22 year-old Rizzuto was arrested after he and his brother-in-law burned down a barbershop for insurance money – his only conviction ever. He was in jail for only a few months.
By the '70s, the Rizzutos and other Sicilians were at odds with the leadership of the Bonanno's Montreal organization, then headed by the volatile Calabrian, Paolo Violi. Finally, one night in 1978, the Rizzutos' problem was solved: Violi was shot in the back of the head as he sat down for a meal at a Montreal restaurant. His grisly slaying ushered in the Rizzuto era.
A mafia-style shooting in New York
Vito's true mafia baptism occurred in 1981 when a factional tug-of-war within the Bonnano family in New York led to the decision to murder three dissident captains. A request went out to Montreal for hit men, and Vito was dispatched as a shooter. On the night of May 5, 1981, the three mob captains showed up at a hangout in Brooklyn, where gunmen immediately jumped out of a closet and opened fire. The first person charging from the closet was Vito Rizzuto.
A photo taken of Rizutto by FBI agents. In Montreal, Vito embraced the day-to-day operations of the family. He moved into a palatial house on a street called "Mafia Row", due to the fact its occupants are mostly mobsters and their relatives. His house is 4,300 square metres, with his father living in a similar spread next door.
Vito established his presence in loan-sharking, gambling, drug smuggling, and money-laundering. He formed alliances with other Italian-based crime families, along with the Hell's Angels, Montreal's West End Gang and South American cartels.
The glamorous - and dangerous - world of a gangster
Vito's routine was to rise at eleven o'clock every morning and go to the Cosenza bar, a social club the family runs on Jarry St. East, about thirty kilometers from their home. He is an avid golfer and could often be found on the links around Montreal. He drove upscale cars, including Lincolns, Mercedes, Jaguars and Corvettes. He owns resort property in Mexico and always traveled with bodyguards outside of Montreal.
Yet police had little success curbing his operations. In the '80s, Rizzuto was arrested twice for importing hash, but got off both times when a witness changed his story and wiretaps used by police were deemed illegal.
Joe Pistone, an FBI plant in the Bonnano crime family, says violence is part of life for any mafia member. Vito Rizzuto's world is a violent one. In 1992, for example, Giuseppe Lopresti, a neighbor of Vito's in Mafia Row and one of his closest associates, was found in a vacant lot, murdered, his body wrapped in a canvas sheet. He had been shot in the head, apparently because he'd run afoul of the New York mob. In 1997, Hamilton mobster Johnny "Pops" Papalia and his right-hand man were murdered. Papalia's death allowed Rizzuto to extend his reach into Ontario.
New York mafia connection turns on Rizzuto
By the 1990s, Vito's organization was so powerful it was considered stronger than most of New York's five Cosa Nostra families. But, his fall from this pinnacle was due to the treachery of his American partners-in-crime in the Bonanno family. The FBI had waged a relentless war against the New York mafia and in 2001, they targeted the Bonanno family and its cunning boss, Joey Massino. Their efforts to break the family paid off when Massino's right-hand man, Salvatore Vitale, agreed to co-operate. Vitale fingered Rizzuto as among the shooters in the 1981 killing of the three dissident Bonanno captains. Consequently, on the early morning of January 20, 2004, Vito was arrested at his home in Montreal.
In August, 2006, after Rizzuto's many appeals were exhausted, the Montreal mobster was finally deported from his prison cell in Quebec to New York where he now awaits trial. His father Nick, meanwhile, is still alive and residing in Montreal, although who will oversee the Rizzuto organization remains uncertain.
Rizzuto handed probation, suspended sentence
