Nicola "Nick" Nero (; born 1977) is a Canadian criminal gang participant currently serving a life sentence for murder. Nero served as one of the leaders of the Wolfpack Alliance and was briefly one of Canada's largest cocaine smugglers.
Entry into crime Nero was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario into an Italian-Canadian family. Nero was described by one high school classmate as "dumb as a bag of hair", but very ambitious and full of rage. Nero took to bodybuilding and steroid abuse as a teenager as it was his ambition to become a professional wrestler, whose ring-name was to be "Iron Man". Nero's steroid abuse caused him to have massive muscles and a raspy voice while excessive use of a tanning salon caused his skin to take a peculiar orange tinge. At the age of 18, he spent $3,500 to study professional wrestling at a warehouse in Hamilton.
Nero told the reporter Wade Hemsworth of The Hamilton Spectator that he could bench-press 600 pounds and spoke of his desire to be Canada's greatest professional wrestler. Hemsworth wrote: "He's 5 foot 8, weights 278 pounds and has a chest big enough that you can rest a dinner plate on". He told Hemsworth: "I like bodybuilding, but it was kind of boring. You just go into shows. I want to be an athlete, not just a guy who works out". In 2003, Nero placed 7th in the super-heavyweight division of the Canadian Bodybuilder Federation's championships.
On the night of 11 December 2003, Nero took part in a robbery in Toronto where $3 million in cash were taken from an armored car. The driver of the armored car, Joseph Bruni, was involved in the robbery and opened the back door of the armored car, which allowed Nero and Michele "Mike" Stante to take the bags of cash. Nero was convicted of theft, but his share of the robbery, namely $1 million, was never recovered. Nero used his robbery proceeds to enter the cocaine smuggling business in partnership with a Hells Angel, Zavisa "Zav" Drecic.
In 2007, Nero was arrested while living on bail after the Hells Angel-turned-police informer, David Atwell, recorded Drecic buying GHB, the so-called "date rape" drug while Atwell recorded Nero buying cocaine from him. Nero was convicted in 2007 of trafficking in 9 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of hashish, 340 oxycodone pills, 200 Viagra pills and 468 liter of GHB on the basis of what Atwell's wire recorded Nero buying from him in 2005 and 2006. The fact that Nero refused the Crown's offers of a plea bargain where he would testify against his Hells Angels associates improved his reputation in the underworld as someone who could be trusted not to turn informer.
After his convictions for drug trafficking and robbery in May 2007, Nero met in prison a Mafiosi, Pietro Scarcella, and went into business with him. Scarcella had been nearly killed by another prisoner who stabbed him half dozen times with a homemade knife in an attempted "jailhouse hit" in April 2007 and he was afraid for his life. Nero, a tall man with bulging muscles served as his bodyguard. Scarcella when he applied for parole in 2007 and 2007 asked to be placed in the Niagara area, which would place him close to Nero.
In 2009, Nero appealed for parole, telling the parole board amid his tears that he was deeply sorry for his crimes as stated: "My life has been destroyed with this, this product [cocaine]. I don't even know how to describe it. This destroyed my family... I chose to profit from something that destroyed my family... I want to pay my debt to society. I want to do my time. I want to go out and I want to raise my family well...Cocaine destroyed my family. There is no need to destroy other families." The parole board agreed to his release, but did not grant him full parole as he wanted as he still refused to return the $1 million stolen in 2003. Nero's parole conditions stated he was not to own a cellphone or a pager; provide his parole officer with a monthly statement of his income and debts; not to associate with anyone with a criminal record; and "refrain from the purchase, possession or consumption of medicines without a prescription". The Canadian journalist Peter Edwards and the Mexican journalist Luis Nájera wrote that Nero immediately went about violating all of his parole conditions after his release on 3 November 2009. A lien was imposed on Nero ordering him to repay the $1 million he had stolen, which he avoided by refusing to take legitimate employment.
The Wolfpack After his release on day parole in November 2009, Nero started to work with one of Scarcella's associates, Martino Caputo, the Toronto agent for the Rizzuto family of Montreal. Nero's request to join the Mafia was refused under the grounds that he was a "heat score" (slang for a criminal who attracts police attention), but Caputo went into business with him. Edwards and Nájera wrote that Caputo was among the "crėme de la crėme" of Mafiosi in Toronto who had greater authority to act as the Rizzuto family in Montreal was plunged into bloody in-fighting. Caputo joined the Wolfpack because he wanted to buy cocaine from the Sinaloa Cartel directly.
Nero was in charge of smuggling cocaine into the Niagara Peninsula from Buffalo, New York as part of the Wolfpack Alliance. Rabih "Robby" Alkhalil of Montreal recruited Nero into the Wolfpack despite viewing him as being of low intelligence as he felt Nero's connections with the Hells Angels would be useful. The Wolfpack leaders used encrypted texts on the Pretty Good Privacy system to communicate, and wrote frankly about plans to commit crimes. Nero made an average profit of CA$1 million in cash for every 30 kilograms of cocaine he sold, which made him a wealthy man, although he always felt he was not making enough money. His steroid abuse made his moods very volatile and his paranoia and rage issues made him a difficult member of the Wolfpack. Nero had become of the most important cocaine smugglers in Canada, bringing in an average of 400 kilograms of cocaine per week into the Niagara Peninsula via boats and trucks. Despite his profits, Nero still refused to repay the $1 million lien, claiming poverty under the grounds that he was unemployed.
In 2011, Nero had met Tawnya Del Ben Fletcher, a young woman from a wealthy family at a gym in Niagara Falls and started to date her. Fletcher's father owned a popular hotel. In October 2011, Nero became engaged to Fletcher, a much younger woman at the age of 27 with an MBA who turned down admission to a medical school in Australia to live with him. Besides for her MBA, Fletcher was awarded in 2006 an honours Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University. To impress her, Nero traded in his Ferrari F340 for a Ferrari F458 automobile worth $450,000, and later purchased a third car, a Lamborghini Aventador. At the same time, Caputo started to date Tamara Fletcher, the identical twin sister of Tawnya.
Nero lived in a St. Catharines half-way house from Sunday to Thursday and a place of his choosing on Fridays and Saturdays per his parole conditions. While out on his weekend passes Nero lived in a condo in Niagara-on-the-Lake owned by Fletcher, but lied to the parole board by bribing a former girlfriend to say he was living with her in Toronto while he was out on his weekend passes. Nero never admitted his relationship with Fletcher to the parole board, which reflected his tendency to hide as much as possible about what he was doing from the parole board. Fletcher had purchased the lakefront condo in Niagara-on-the-Lake from Caputo's brother, Antonio, in 2011 at a price significantly lower than the market price. Although he did not live in Toronto during his weekend passes as he claimed, Nero frequently visited Toronto in the company of Caputo, where the two men were often seen in the Little Italy neighborhood on College Street.
Nero attracted attention at the half-way house he lived in during 2011–2012 by driving either his Ferrari or Maserati automobiles. As Nero had no job, his choice of transportation was considered very suspicious by the police. Several of the other residents of the half-way house-who were jealous of Nero's way of flaunting his wealth-reported him to the police, saying he was living well beyond the means of an unemployed man. The police took an interest in the way that Nero who lived on welfare drove about his bright red Ferrari F430 automobile, leading one policeman to say of Nero: "It just screamed stupidity. You can't fix stupid". Another policeman noted that Nero modelled himself after the Jimmy "the Gent" Conway character played by Robert De Niro in the 1990 film Goodfellas, saying: "He thinks he's Robert De Niro in the movies". Nero had plans to expand his cocaine distribution business into Europe, developing a network of contacts in Germany and Greece with the aim of becoming Europe's top cocaine distributor. Nero's neighbors in the Niagara-on-the-Lake condo described him as an unfriendly and unpleasant man. The neighbors reported that both Fletcher and Nero "kept to themselves".
The police suspected that Nero did not intend to abide by his parole conditions as he violated his bail conditions. The police started an investigation of Nero dubbed Project Ink. In February 2012, the police seized 110 kilograms of cocaine worth $30 million from a warehouse in St. Catharines, which the police knew belonged to Nero. The police wiretaps of Fletcher's condo that she shared with Nero revealed that Fletcher was the more intelligent of the couple as she tried hard to assist her fiancée with becoming a successful gangster, using her business acumen. The police wiretaps showed that Nero's intelligence level constantly exasperated her. On the evening of 24 April 2012, she was recorded by the police wiretap shouting at her fiancée: "You just waste so much frickin' time and money you know". Nero stated he needed time to discuss matters with the Sinaloa Cartel more, which led her to say "why?" In response Nero stated "I don't understand what's going on". When she suggested that internal theft of cocaine that was so troubling him might be reduced by paying his workers more as she noted that his workers had an annual income of only $30,000—which made stealing his cocaine very tempting—Nero vetoed that suggestion under the grounds it would mean less money for himself. Despite her later claims to only play a passive role in the Wolfpack, the police bugs inside their condo recorded Fletcher and Nero engaged in frequent conversations about how to discover internal theft in the smuggling ring as both were convinced that someone was stealing the cocaine on its way up from Mexico.
At one point, a police bug recorded Fletcher telling Nero: "I don't know how normal people afford life". Nero agreed with her as he expressed his utter contempt for people who lived honestly as "deadbeats" and told Fletcher that she was lucky to be engaged to a gangster who lived dishonestly and committed the "extra special" crimes that allowed her to live the lavish lifestyle that he told her that she deserved. Fletcher agreed with that statement and then started to talk about having children, which she clearly wanted. Fletcher only half-joking stated that any child that Nero might father by her would be a moronic "devil child". In March 2012, Caputo ordered Nero to stop driving his Ferrari and Maserati, saying he was attracting too much attention, forcing Nero to reluctantly drive a 2001 Yukon Denali SUV. Nero, who was very status-conscious, was deeply humiliated by the order, as the police wiretaps recorded Nero cursing his Yukon Denali as a vehicle unworthy of him and expressing the desire to show off by driving either his Ferrari or Maserati again.