Who will be GTA's next mob boss?
There's a lack of candidates vying to be Toronto area's next godfather, although experts say leadership vacuum won't last There's a lack of candidates vying to be Toronto area's next godfather, although experts say leadership vacuum won't last

By Peter Edwards
Toronto Star, July 21, 2006, page A3

WANTED MAFIA GODFATHER. HIGH-LEVEL EXPERIENCE WORKING WITH OTHER CRIME GROUPS A PLUS BUT NOT NECESSARY.

Toronto area mobsters haven't taken out a classified ad for a new godfather - yet - but there's clearly a leadership vacuum atop the local underworld.

Murders, court actions and voluntary retirements have drastically depleted the top level of the local mob ranks, according to police specialists.

While the local mob remains strong in drug trafficking, gambling and fraud, it's hard to remember a time when its leaders were weaker, organized crime experts say.

Antonio Nicaso, who has written several books on the underworld, said no one person has emerged as an obvious mob leader for the Greater Toronto Area.

"Why would you follow someone if you don't think they can lead you anywhere?" asks Nicaso, a senior partner in Soave Strategy Group of Concord, a security firm employing former police organized crime specialists.

Despite the apparent dearth of quality local leaders, there's plenty of local mob activity in the GTA, according to the latest Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada organized crime report.

The report, prepared by police specialists on organized crime, notes the local mob (which police call "traditional" and "Italian- based" organized crime) is involved in a wide variety of criminal enterprises.

They include running illegal Internet gambling operations, illegal gaming establishments in cafes and restaurants, bookmaking, credit card fraud, and distributing illegal drugs, including cocaine, heroin, marijuana, ecstasy, gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), anabolic steroids and psilocybin (magic mushrooms).

"Legitimate businesses targeted by (traditional organized crime) groups include construction and transport companies, restaurants and bars, and import/export companies," the report continues.

Not everyone associated with the local mob is burning with ambition for the top job.

And, contrary to popular belief, you can leave the mob, if you keep your mouth shut or move far away.

One local septuagenarian, who was a prime suspect in a gangland slaying, has apparently decided he prefers sunning himself in Florida to local gangland intrigues.

Another long-time local mobster, who's 60, seems to have decided he'd rather be a good father than a godfather. He's putting his young daughter before his long-standing pursuits of counterfeiting and heroin trafficking.

Meanwhile, long-time local mob power Pietro (Peter) Scarcella, 56, won't be free to vie for the top job for several years.

Scarcella was sentenced earlier this year to 11 years in prison for his role in a bungled mob hit in a North York sandwich shop that left bystander Louise Russo, a mother of three, paralyzed.

One of Scarcella's intended targets that day was Sicilian mob leader Michele Modica, who seemed to be pushing for more local power at Scarcella's expense.

Modica has since been deported - for his second time - to Italy.

While Toronto has never had an all-powerful godfather, it's hard to remember when things have been so weak at the leadership level, mob experts say.

"It's open," says Anthony Saldutto, formerly of the elite police Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, and now president of Detek Investigative Group, a Concord security firm.

"It's been (open) always but it seems even more so now."

Over the past decade or so, mob experts say Vito Rizzuto of Montreal has filled much of the leadership void, as a commuting godfather of sorts.

Rizzuto, who once ran a waste disposal business here, is currently in custody in Quebec, fighting an extradition order that would send him to the U.S. to face a racketeering indictment. It alleges he fired shots that killed three Bonanno crime family members in 1981 in New York.

A police report filed in his extradition case alleges that Rizzuto is widely considered to be the head of the Mafia in Canada.

There has been considerable interest in mob circles in the Toronto-area visits of a Montreal man believed by many to be Rizzuto's hand-picked successor.

In one visit this year, the Montrealer, accompanied by a bodyguard who could barely wedge himself into their rented sport utility vehicle, met with a Woodbridge man who's believed to be a suspect in the Feb. 9, 2005, murder of 58-year-old Vincenzo Raco of Brampton.

Raco was facing loan sharking charges when he was shot in the head in a van outside a Woodbridge medical centre.

The Montrealer, who flies here first-class, is also considered to have friendly ties to a long-standing Hamilton mob family .

Meanwhile, Alfonso Caruana, of Woodbridge, is fighting extradition to Italy, where he would face almost 22 years in prison if convicted of laundering drug money. Caruana was charged in Canada in 1998 with conspiracy to import and traffic cocaine, and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Whatever happens in Toronto will likely impact the nearby Hamilton mob, and vice versa, mob experts say.

John (Pops) Papalia of Hamilton was once considered Ontario's top mobster, and a frequent visitor to Toronto. Papalia was murdered in Hamilton in April 1997.

Hamilton mobster Pasquale (Pat) Musitano, 36, was originally charged alongside his younger brother Angelo with hiring a local hitman to commit the murder. However, those first-degree murder charges were withdrawn when they pleaded guilty to the 1997 gangland murder of Carmen Barillaro of Niagara Falls, a Papalia lieutenant.

The Musitanos are due to be released from minimum security Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst on Oct. 5.

"I think it's going to get heated up once the Musitanos come out," Saldutto says.

Armand La Barge, chief of York Regional Police, wouldn't comment on leadership contenders in the local mob, but he didn't dispute there's a seismic shift underway.

"Vacuums don't stay vacuums for very long," La Barge said.