The Sixth Family (63 page)
Authors: Lee Lamothe
“Vito Rizzuto heads the family as a business,” says an RCMP report on the organization.
As a leader, Vito’s presence and name have meant much in the underworld, but his hands-on links are carefully hidden. He declares modest salaries on his income tax but drives luxury automobiles. He once maintained a Lincoln, a Mercedes-Benz, a Jaguar and three Corvettes, one of them a vintage 1959 model. He has led a busy and hectic life but one that rarely—if ever—involves steady nine-to-five employment. He played golf more than 100 times a year, often using the private time on the links to discuss intimate organizational details with other members of his carefully selected foursome. It is a gentleman’s version of the mob boss’s traditional “walk-and-talks,” where a gangster would go for a brisk walk with criminal associates to avoid having the chat caught by police microphones. Vito maintained a presence at the Club Social Consenza and three other clubs and cafés that were part of his regular routine. His job was largely to show up, to just show his face and lend his name. Transactions rarely took more than that. His father had prepared him well.
Vito has long relied on his father, Nick, as his most senior and trusted advisor, police say.
Nick spends much of his time at the Club Social Consenza, jovially playing cards with close friends behind a large window that looks out on to the public walkway of the strip mall where the club is located. He is invariably neatly dressed and often formally attired in shirt, jacket and tie when he moves about the city. He evokes a distinctive gangster chic with his penchant for wearing a fedora to cover his almost bald head and sunglasses as a bid, perhaps, at greater anonymity.
In his younger days, Nick could look menacing and forceful. He walked with confidence and could flash a look of disapproval that associates quickly learned to recognize and appease at the earliest opportunity. As a senior citizen, his image has muted considerably. He has shed much of his bulk and his facial features have been softened by time and frequent flashes of a teeth-baring smile. His grin might be provoked by what police say happens when many of these associates meet with him. At the Consenza, or other restaurants that he frequents in Montreal, such as the Roma, police say he has quiet discussions with visitors who outline plans and schemes; Nick then gives those plans that meet with his approval the family’s blessing, police believe. Nick then often leaves with a packet of money, what is referred to in French as
cote d’argent
—literally, “dues money,” but more accurately what American mobsters call “tribute money,” profit flowing up the hierarchy of the organization. Police say he hides the money in his jacket, topcoat or other articles of clothing until he can unload it. Most suitable for a man of his position and esteem, this is not money that Nick “collects,” but rather, money he “accepts.” His role, police say, is of utmost discretion. Vito would not want it any other way.
cote d’argent
—literally, “dues money,” but more accurately what American mobsters call “tribute money,” profit flowing up the hierarchy of the organization. Police say he hides the money in his jacket, topcoat or other articles of clothing until he can unload it. Most suitable for a man of his position and esteem, this is not money that Nick “collects,” but rather, money he “accepts.” His role, police say, is of utmost discretion. Vito would not want it any other way.
Nick’s leisurely routine, however, does not mean he is removed from the family’s affairs. He is a frequent ambassador at important meetings. Almost daily, Nick meets at the Consenza club with Paolo Renda and Francesco “Frank” Arcadi, described by police as a leading Rizzuto captain. Arcadi was convicted of operating an illegal gaming house in 1984, but came to fuller police attention when he was seen at Vito’s side at the funeral of Joe LoPresti in 1992. He then started spending time with Vito, turning up in cars with Vito when they were stopped by police and during police surveillance of family weddings and funerals, including the Toronto funeral of Gaetano Panepinto. Police believe that Arcadi is taking over supervision of much of the street level action on behalf of the family and has responsibility for both the Saint-Léonard and Rivière-des-Prairies areas of Montreal.
Paolo Renda is himself now a senior citizen, although a robust and often dapper-looking man with his hair graying and thinning at the front. A quiet operator, Renda has been at the Rizzutos’ side all his life. He is Nick’s cousin and went on to marry Maria, his daughter. As Vito’s brother-in-law, he bonded with Vito and the men’s friendship was baptized by fire in the botched arson in their early days.
Renda has been given little attention by police over the years, despite at one time being a suspect in the killing of Paolo Violi. Renda is a businessman. He runs a construction company, Renda Construction Inc., that at one time had Vito listed as a secondary shareholder, vice president and administrator. Its office address was in the same strip plaza as the Consenza social club, where Renda is seen most days. The firm was not a flourishing success, police documents show: in 2001, the company declared just $21,008 in earnings; the following year that dropped to $8,031, before bouncing back, in 2003, to a declared $34,032. Renda is involved in other companies as well, including a second construction firm, a motel, a bistro and a restaurant in Longueuil, Quebec. His wide business involvement has led police to suspect that he runs the financial wing of the family.
Police have also followed the careers of Vito’s sons. Investigators have pegged Leonardo, Vito’s youngest son, as the most capable of achieving leadership of the family enterprise. Leonardo is bright, having attended the University of Ottawa’s law school, and is now a lawyer in Quebec. Along with his sister, Bettina, he works at the law firm of Loris Cavaliere, which often represents Vito. Leonardo causes tremendous grief for police investigating Vito and his associates because of his special legal standing. Leonardo, police say, has frequently sat in on meetings between family members, including his father and brother—extending to the meetings the protection of lawyer-client privilege. Police have been reluctant to listen in on such conversations because these intrusions, as was shown when the RCMP previously bugged the dinner conversations of Vito’s lawyer, are viewed dimly by the courts.
Nick, Vito’s first-born son, is more of the hands-on guy in the family, police allege. He frequently meets with someone before that person is allowed to meet with Vito. An astute man with street smarts, he checks out strangers wishing to get close to the family; he often speaks on his family’s behalf. He and a key associate also run a Longueuil real estate firm.
Beyond this core leadership, the Sixth Family’s ranks—the men under Vito’s command—are expansive.
“The nucleus of the Montreal-based Sicilian Mafia … [comprises] hundreds of soldiers and associates,” says a Canadian police report drafted in 2004. Those who merely do business with the Sixth Family or work with them in short-term ventures are not included in this. Neither, generally, are the businessmen who do mostly non-criminal favors for the organization. Enumerating the strength of a secret organization is fraught with difficulty. Some members, no doubt, manage to keep below the radar of police and other observers of organized crime. Some members die—some of natural causes, others killed in disputes—and others are imprisoned. The jailed members will, for the most part, remain associated with the group, both inside and outside of the institution, but hardly count when calculating the street strength of an organization while they are away. There are also many fringe players who, for convenience, safety or profit, pledge fealty to the organization but are not a part of it. This applies to a growing number of street gang members in Montreal who have taken up the slack in the Hells Angels drug distribution.
There is evidence to suggest the number of people who are a routine and continuing part of the Rizzuto criminal organization, those who appear to have a formal role, a specific job and a designated reporting mechanism within the network’s enterprises and are considered to be members by police, exceeds 500 people. For instance:
• A recent internal police report on those considered to be the leading targets for investigation as part of the Rizzuto criminal organization in the city of Montreal shows three large
cellules
, or “cells,” of the organization, two of them comprising roughly 50 people, and a third, 30 people.
• Each of the cells has its own reporting structure and leadership. Three people supervise each of the two large cells and one leader oversees the smaller one. These seven bosses, who have for decades been among the most prominent men of the Sixth Family, are shown as reporting to Vito.
• The Sixth Family’s Montreal-based operations also have two smaller satellite cells, comprising about a half-dozen members each, one based on the South Shore, the communities across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal, and the other in Cornwall, Ontario, a small border city linking Quebec, Ontario and Massena, New York. There is another outpost linked to the Kahnawake native reserve, also on the South Shore.
• A dossier on Vito, compiled by the Montreal police, documents some of his meetings and telephone conversations with alleged associates, recorded during police operations into organized crime activities. Taking only those people listed in meetings since 1985, after the death of Vic Cotroni, and removing frivolous or apparently purely social gatherings, the list exceeds 75 names. Most have criminal records and most are well known in the underworld. Only 14 of the names also appear on the above lists.
• A classified chart prepared by the RCMP’s Criminal Analysis Branch maps out “Vito Rizzuto’s Criminal Affiliations by Kinship and Intermarriage.” It traces the marriages and blood ties between Vito and 10 other families, comprising some 40 people, most of whom form the innermost core of the Sixth Family. Almost all of them have family members who have faced drug arrests or other criminal charges and all of them have members who appear in criminal intelligence files as organized crime members or associates.
• Yet another confidential police report tracks the organization’s leadership in Montreal in 1997. It shows a spider web of lines linking “sub-organizations” and “henchmen” back to Vito and his father Nick. It shows 13 cells, each headed by a senior underworld player who reports directly to Vito. Another three key men are shown separately as also reporting to Vito. Another four separate cells—the remnants of the old Cotroni and Violi organization, including some of the most venerable mobsters in Montreal—are shown as reporting to Vito, with the now-deceased Frank Cotroni acting as an intermediary. Another four cells are shown reporting to Nick through Agostino Cuntrera. Other core members of the Sixth Family are noted individually on the chart, with most linked to Vito through Nick.
• A recent report on the Sixth Family’s chief operatives in Ontario shows 15 key men, most of whom run their own powerful Mafia organizations in the Toronto area. These groups range in size from a crew of five or six to a sprawling organization of several dozen, typically related, members that is, itself, an impressive Mafia organization. Also in Ontario, police allege, are four or five active and successful businessmen with no criminal records who work intimately on Vito’s behalf.
• The Sixth Family has other branches or operatives, smaller in size, in other Canadian cities, most notably Vancouver, a large city on Canada’s west coast, where there is a “Western Front” documented by police.
• There is a separate group of Sixth Family members that police refer to as the “new generation,” which is generally made up of the sons, nephews and younger cousins of older Sixth Family members. Rizzuto, Sciascia, Manno, LoPresti, Renda and Cuntrera are all last names that cascade through the generations while continuing to find their way into police files.
Internationally, as well, the Sixth Family’s interests are extensive. Beyond its numerous activities in Canada and the United States, its trafficking enterprises in Venezuela and Colombia and its relatives who remained in Cattolica Eraclea and surrounding Sicilian villages, an unreleased analysis by Canada’s Department of Justice tracked financial holdings and connections from the Sixth Family to 16 other countries. They include:
• money laundering, investments and financial transfers through Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain. The family also has at least one operative located in London, England;
• investments in Saudi Arabia achieved with the suspected involvement of a member of the Saudi Royal family;
• importation of wood products and wood flooring from, and financial investments in, China;
• financial investment ventures in Algeria, a North African nation, and in the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich Middle Eastern country on the Persian Gulf;
• investments in Cuba, along with periodic visits and extended stays in the country;
• drug transactions, meetings and visits in Mexico;
• alleged infiltration of public works projects in Italy. Also, at least one family operative is based in Rome and another in Milan;
• drug importation and involvement in airport servicing in Haiti;
• gambling enterprises in Belize, a small Central American country that borders Mexico;
• family members and associates traveling to and attending meetings in Panama, Aruba, Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
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