Monday, July 3, 2017

"One gang’s name keeps resurfacing, the Wolf Pack"

Pick a motive, any motive, for the mob violence in Hamilton. Vendettas and retaliation are based on history, but at stake is control of the lucrative underworld businesses from Niagara to Montreal. The Musitanos, who are Calabrian, linked their organization with Montreal’s boss Vito Rizzuto, a Sicilian, who had long vied to control underworld markets in the Golden Horseshoe. Pat Musitano was introduced to Vito Rizzuto in October 1997.

Magaddino crime family
The Musitanos were enveloped by the Rizzuto family expanding into Ontario after it broke from its subservient role as a wing of New York’s Bonanno Crime Family. Ontario was then under the auspices of the Stefano Magaddino Crime Family of Buffalo — through Carmen Barillaro and Johnny Papalia.

One gang’s name keeps resurfacing, the Wolf Pack. It spread from B.C. and made ties to the remnants of the Rizzuto crime family, which has been showing muscle in the GTA and Montreal.

Carmen Barillaro
It appears the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta in Toronto, which covets the Quebec drug market, has been pushing back. One organized crime expert says the conflict is as close to “an all-out drug war as you can get.”

A string of unsolved murders are believed connected to the feud, including Sukhvir “Sukh” Deo, 35, who was gunned down June 2016, and 39-year-old Anastasios Leventis who was shot dead in January.