The Rizzuto crime family () is an Italian Canadian crime family based in Montreal, Quebec, whose organized crime activity covers most of southern Quebec and Ontario. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers the family a faction of the Bonanno crime family of New York City, while Canadian and most other international law enforcement agencies recognize the organization as an independent family. The Rizzuto family is sometimes referred to as the Sixth Family.
Nicolo Rizzuto, a Sicilian immigrant from Cattolica Eraclea, established the organization in the 1970s as part of the Sicilian faction of the Montreal-based Cotroni crime family. An internal war within the Cotroni family broke out by the late 1970s which resulted in the death of acting captain Paolo Violi and his brothers, allowing the Rizzutos to overtake the Cotronis as the city's preeminent crime family. Nicolo subsequently earned the monikers the "Canadian Godfather" and "boss of the Mafia in Canada" from international organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso.
Nicolo's son Vito was imprisoned between 2007 and 2012 for murders in which he participated in 1981, causing a power struggle among criminals in Montreal. During his imprisonment, his son Nicolo Jr. was killed in 2009 and Nicolo Sr. was shot by a sniper while in his home in 2010. Upon Vito's release, several people were killed in what was suspected to be retaliation for the murders of his family. Vito died of natural causes in 2013, and the head of the Rizzuto family is now assumed to be his son Leonardo.
History Overtaking of the Cotroni family Nicolo Rizzuto married Libertina Manno during the early 1940s, the daughter of a Sicilian Mafia leader, Antonio Manno. Rizzuto immigrated with his family to Montreal in 1954 from Cattolica Eraclea.
In the 1970s, Rizzuto was an underling in the Sicilian faction, led by Luigi Greco until his death in 1972,Manning, George A, PH.D Financial Investigation and Forensic Accounting pg.214–215 of the Calabrian Cotroni crime family. As tensions continued to grow into a power struggle between the Calabrian and Sicilian factions of the family, a mob war began in 1976. In 1976, wiretapped conversations of Crotoni family capodecina Paolo Violi and undercover police officer Robert Ménard from the previous six years were played in public at Commission d'enquête sur le crime organisé, which destroyed Violi's reputation. 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". The Bonanno family, to whom the Cotroni family answered to, shifted their support from Violi to Rizzuto, whom they felt to be a more competent criminal.
In 1977, Rizzuto and Violi met face-to-face in a gesture to resolve their differences, according to a police report, but the peace talks failed, and most of the Rizzuto family fled to Venezuela. This led to a violent Mafia war in Montreal which resulted in the deaths of Violi and his brothers, along with others, spanning the mid-1970s to the early 1980s until the war ceased. Antonio Manno's son Domenico was also instrumental in Violi's murder. He received a seven-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to kill Violi; Rizzuto confidant Agostino Cuntrera received a five-year sentence in relation to Violi's murder. By the mid 1980s, the Rizzuto crime family emerged as Montreal's pre-eminent crime family after the turf war.
The Rizzuto family along with their allies in the Cuntrera-Caruana clan were major players in the economy of Venezuela via their holding company of Aceroes Prensados, which owned real estate, ranches, trucking companies, factories, hotels, shipping, service providers and building contractors whose assets in Venezuela in the 1980s were worth $500 million. Nicolo's son, Vito, later followed him into the Mafia. He kept a low profile, working only with trusted people close to the family. They worked with the Cuntrera-Caruana clan, Colombian and Venezuelan drug cartels, and the Bonanno crime family in New York City. Gerlando Sciascia was a Bonanno caporegime that served as a representative for the Rizzutos. Rizzuto was the mediator who oversaw the peace among the Hells Angels, the Mafia, street gangs, Colombian cartels, and the Irish mobs such as the West End Gang.The man they call the Canadian Godfather , National Post, February 26, 2001Reorganized crime, The Globe and Mail, September 26, 2008 The Rizzuto family lived in a Mafia "village" along a section of Gouin Boulevard, where most of the imposing Tudor-style mansions were owned by Mafiosi. The Rizzuto family and their allies in the Cuntera-Caruana clan were more cosmopolitan than the Cotroni family as Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of the Toronto Star noted they lived "...on a grandiose international scale, driving BMW 732i's and Mercedes-Benz 500SELs and owning English country mansions with names such as Broomfield Manor and The Hook. Their children kept away from the old neighborhood, and attended well-heeled private schools such as Selwyn House with the offspring of more mainstream capitalists".
In the 1980s, Vito's French-Canadian right-hand man, Raynald Desjardins, along with Gerald Hiscock and Michel Routhier were involved in smuggling drugs via Newfoundland. Taking advantage of the high unemployment rate in the Newfoundland fishing industry, the Rizzuto family employed the fishermen to use their boats to smuggle drugs from Turkey into Montreal with the fishermen being paid between $17,000 and $25,000 per voyage. In October 1987, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized one fishing boat, the Charlotte Louise that was carrying 17 tons of Turkish hashish. Vito Rizzuto, Desjardins, Hiscock and Rothier were all charged with conspiracy to smuggle drugs, but the judge at the trial excluded much of the wiretap evidence. The trial ended in an acquittal for all of the accused on November 8, 1990. In 1995, a document from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal stated: "If sold on the street the cocaine, hashish, marijuana and heroin seized in Canada in 1993 alone would have earned criminals between $1.5 and $4 billion. Amounts seized correspond to about 10 percent of imports". The same document estimated that Quebec organized crime groups made profits of $30 billion in 1993 with the Mafia and the Hells Angels taking the largest share. Between 1988 and 1995, Quebec-based organized crime groups were responsible for 90 percent of all the cocaine and hashish seized in Canada.
Canadian Mafia journalists Lee Lamothe and Adrian Humphreys dubbed the Rizzuto clan the Sixth Family to describe them on an equal footing with the Five Families of Cosa Nostra in New York. According to the book The Sixth Family:
In 1996, the firm of Olifas Marketing Group (OMG) was founded in Vaughan by Salvatore Oliveti, a recycling/garbage company. two of the men on OMG's board of directors had Mafia associations; Giancarlo Serpe had been a business partner of Enio Mora. Another board member, Frank Campoli was the first cousin to Giovannia Rizzuto (the wife of Vito Rizzuto) and was a guest at the wedding in 1995 of Nick Rizzuto Jr. Giovannia Rizzuto and her three adult children, namely Nick Rizzuto, Leonardo Rizzuto and Libertina Rizzuto, collectively owned shares worth $1.6 million in OMG. In 1997, OMG won its first contract for recycling with the city of Etobicoke just before Etobicoke was merged into Toronto. OMG then took the recycling contract for all of Toronto. OMG enjoyed massive success, winning contracts for recycling with the cities of Ottawa, Markham, London, Hamilton, Windsor and St. Catharines as well with numerous school boards and universities across Ontario. On May 30, 2002, Vito Rizzuto was arrested for drunk driving in a Jeep Grand Cherokee that belonged to OMG. An investigation by journalists from La Presse revealed that Rizzuto-who had no official role with OMG-routinely drove OMG vehicles. In February 2010, an audit by the Canada Revenue Agency revealed that Rizzuto's wife and children were major shareholders in OMG, leading to the Rizzutos to sell their share to Oliveti despite his claims not to know who the Rizzutos were.
After consolidation of their power in the 1990s, the Rizzutos became over-exposed and over-extended. The first major blow to the family was the murder of their Toronto agent Gaetano Panepinto by the 'Ndrangheta hitman Salvatore Calautti on October 3, 2000. Though the murder had been sanctioned by Rizzuto who withdrew his "protection" of Panepinto (meaning that Panepinto could be killed without fear of revenge by the Rizzuto family), the fact that the family had not taken action themselves against Panepinto for unsanctioned murders damaged its image in the underworld. The journalists Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso wrote: "The murder marked a rare lapse in Vito's judgment and a subtle turning point in his fortunes. It would have been far better to take action himself against Panepinto if he needed to sacrifice his lieutenant. By bending to the pressure of the Italian team that visited him, Vito had further legitimized the 'Ndrangheta on the streets and undermined his own security". Panepinto was replaced as the family's Toronto agent by Juan Ramon Fernandez, a Spanish gangster who had been a family associate since the 1980s. In January 2001, Rizzuto called a meeting at a Toronto restaurant attended by members of the Gambino family of New York, the Magaddino family of Buffalo, and the seven 'Ndrangheta clans of Toronto to discuss his plans to complete his takeover of the underworld in Ontario.
Power vacuum after Vito's arrest Vito Rizzuto was arrested on January 20, 2004, in Montreal, for his involvement in the May 5, 1981, gangland killings of three rival Bonanno crime family captains (Alphonse Indelicato, Philip Giaccone and Dominick Trinchera) and was sentenced to a 10-year prison sentence on May 4, 2007, after being extradited to the United States. After Rizzuto was arrested in 2004, a committee of caretaker leaders for Vito Rizzuto was formed of Nicolo Rizzuto, Paolo Renda, Rocco Sollecito, Francesco Arcadi, Lorenzo Giordano and Francesco Del Balso.
On February 11, 2005, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA) arrested Giuseppe Zappia, an Italian engineer at his luxury villa outside of Rome on charges of fraud in connection with his efforts to win the contract to build a bridge to connect Sicily to Calabria on behalf of the Rizzuto family. Zappia was infamous in Canada as his firm Les Terrasses Zarolega had been awarded the contract without tender to build the Olympic Village for the 1976 Olympics at the express wish of Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau. The Olympic Village that Les Terrasses Zarolega built cost the city of Montreal $100 million, which was three times the cost projected, and Zappia ended up facing 27 counts of fraud, extortion and paying bribes in connection with the Olympic Village fiasco. Zappia returned to Italy and became a billionaire by construction projects in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya, though there were complaints about cost overruns in his Middle Eastern projects. Despite this inauspicious history, Zappia was a friend of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and he was favored to win the contract to build the bridge over the Strait of Messina. As part of the same investigation, Italy filed an extradition request with Canada for Vito Rizzuto to send to Italy to face charges of fraud and money laundering. Likewise as part of the same investigation, Italy had also filed an extradition request with the United Kingdom for Sivalingam Sivabavanandan, a Sri Lankan businessman living in London; with France for Hakim Hammoudi of Paris who was accused of being the messenger between Zappia and Rizzuto; and with Canada for the extradition of Filippo Ranieri, a building manager in Montreal and a Rizzuto family member.