Mafia sweep reveals GTA link Mob figures in Italy and New York arrested in co-ordinated probe February 08, 2008 Peter Edwards STAFF REPORTER One of 77 alleged Mafia members arrested by police during roundups in New York and Italy yesterday was a regular visitor to the Toronto area, where local contacts would entertain him in discos. Filippo Casamento, suspected of drug trafficking in Sicily, was one of several suspected American mobsters who met with Michele Marresse and Italian Mafia fugitive Michele Modica in York Region during 2003, the Star has learned. Sources say the disco meetings came to the attention of law enforcement officials probing a Mafia transatlantic drug trafficking ring. The investigation, code-named "Old Bridge," led to yesterday's arrests in the U.S. and Italy, part of a sweeping takedown aimed at closing the book on decades-old gangland killings and other crimes. "Organized crime still exists," said New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo. "We like to think it's a vestige of the past. It's not. It is as unrelenting as weeds that continue to sprout in the cracks of society." Casamento, in his early 80s, once owned a cheese business in Brooklyn and was convicted of heroin trafficking in 1972. Since those 2003 meetings in York Region, Modica has been deported for a second time and Marresse is in prison. Police said Modica and Marresse were the intended targets in a botched gangland murder attempt in 2004 in a Toronto sandwich shop that left an innocent bystander, Louise Russo, a paraplegic. At the time of the Old Bridge meetings, Modica was living in a Woodbridge hotel. He and Marresse regularly entertained Casamento and his associates. Their involvement with the Americans was cut short in 2004, when Modica was deported to Sicily to face Mafia-related charges, and Marresse was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for mortgage fraud. International organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso said the meetings between U.S. mobsters and Modica and Marresse in York Region point to Canada's role in organized crime. "This is the largest police operation against the Mafia since the days of the Pizza Connection heroin trafficking ring of the 1980s. Toronto was part of the new network." Investigators said they targeted Mafia members said to be strengthening contacts between groups in Italy and the United States. Those arrested in the U.S., allegedly members of the Gambino crime family, face charges including murder, drug trafficking, robbery, extortion and other crimes dating to the 1970s. The sprawling indictment covers gangland killings from the days when the crime family was run by Paul Castellano, who was killed in 1985. Some of the charges allege more recent crimes, including fraud, conspiracies and theft of union benefits. In yesterday's indictment, U.S. authorities allege associates of the crime family extorted people in the construction industry, embezzled from labour unions and engaged in loansharking and bookmaking. There has been renewed attention to the Sicilian Mafia's ties to the United States since November, when police in Sicily arrested Salvatore Lo Piccolo, a top mobster on the run for more than a decade who was vying to become Cosa Nostra's next "boss of bosses." Toronto Star - With files from Reuters, AP