The International Kingpins: Montreal's Rizzuto Family
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May 5th, 1981, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. It's kind of yuppie central now, but back then, everyone was on edge. You see, there's been a war going on in the mafia, but it's not one family against the other. It's a civil war in the Bonanno family. Three Bonanno captains are on their way to meet their newly self-appointed boss. They think they're on the way to discuss a peace settlement.

Among them is a guy by the name of Sonny Red, who, if you've ever seen the movie Donnie Brasco, you know a version of this story. But it's not the real version. The war started because the boss of the family, the infamous Carmine Galanti, had gotten a little ahead of himself. Galanti had seized control years earlier from the rightful boss, Rusty Rustelli, when the guy got thrown in prison and then moved into heroin trafficking and began importing his soldiers from Sicily.

This pissed off his own soldiers and the bosses of the other four families. So Rusty and the other bosses decided it was time to take out Carmine. And they shot him up at an outdoor restaurant in Bushwick. Nowadays, outdoor restaurants in Bushwick, they're more known for their fashion crimes. Rusty, though, is still in prison. And these other three captains decide they're going to make a move for the control. People start getting killed. Things are going haywire. But this meeting is hopefully going to put a stop to it. And you could say it does, sort of.

The meeting is happening in the storeroom of a crummy Brooklyn apartment. And as the three captains walk into the room, escorted by a few rusty soldiers, one runs his fingers through his hair, giving the sign. Right then, four gunmen rush out of the closet and one of them yells out, this is a holdup, which doesn't really make sense to do, but maybe catchphrases weren't his strong point. What ends up being this particular guy's strong point though, is being a mafia boss. And he'll end up being one of the most successful and powerful ever.

See, that gunman is a Montreal mobster by the name of Vito Rizzuto. And two of the other shooters with him, they're Montreal mobsters too. Him and the other shooters, they open up with submachine guns and they kill all three of the captains. The Canadian mob, led by the Rizzuto family, is just at the start of becoming one of the most powerful gangster outfits out there. And they're buddying up with the New York families, La Cosa Nostra, including the new heads of the Bonanno family.

Soon enough, though, he won't even need the bananas. In fact, he won't even need any of the New York families. Vito and his father are going to be connected and working with so many international crime groups, clans and cartels and mafias all over the world. They're basically the mafia version of Amazon or some other business. I don't know, McDonald's. The guy is global is what I'm trying to say.

And not only will he work with organized crime groups all over the world, he'll also bring unprecedented unity to the streets of Montreal, uniting everyone from biker gangs to Irish crews to street gangs all under his reign, like nothing has ever happened in any other city. This is The Underworld Podcast. ♪

Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, where two journalists who have reported all over the world on gangs and guns and fun things like that bring you a new story of international organized crime every week. I'm one of your hosts, Danny Gold. Your other host, Sean Williams, is here, and he's still British, so he's going to spend the first 15 minutes today just giving you all his feelings about the new Harry and Meghan documentary. Yeah, I don't know. Best I can do is 30 seconds on that. I don't even think, we don't even need 30 seconds. No, no.

Anyway, that joke might not have landed, but I think it would have if we published the episode right when I wrote it. But we are recording this, I think, in the week between Christmas and New Year's. New Year, same us, same delightful banter. As always, we have bonus episodes and other stuff at patreon.com. Or you can sign up with one click directly through iTunes and follow, rate, all that stuff. And if you're listening to us and you're famous...

please either come on our podcast or let us go on yours because our numbers are stagnant and I'm at the end of my goddamn rope. Oh, and a few folks have asked about the merch too and that's going to come real soon. And if you're famous and or a criminal and you're prepared to wear it while twerking in front of the Eiffel Tower or doing crimes, we'll give you a dollar off the RRP. So bear that in mind. Yeah, I mean, we...

We need... I mean, at this point right now, what was our last week, right? We have an advertiser refusing to pay us, which we're going to handle in our own special way. Are you charitably calling him an advertiser? Yeah, and a lawsuit. No, a lawsuit, too, that we got the notice for December 23rd at like 6 p.m. So, yeah. Yeah.

you know, people are always like, oh, podcast, that must be so much fun. It's not. It's not fun. Anyway, moving on. It's a never-ending stream of horror. It's all really fun. Fucking grifters and scam artists and people just trying. Oh, also, I want to give a shout out to our audio producer, Dale Isinger, who a lot of people always ask, like, where the music in the beginning comes from because it changes every episode. Dale makes that music.

He also edits the podcast, so if you need a good editor or you want someone to score something, hire him and pay him a lot of money, but not too much so that he leaves us. But for all your scoring and editing needs, he's just fucking really good at what he does. Anyway, the Montreal Mafia, Rizzuto family. I mean, Montreal is just a great city. One of my favorites. And I just watched the new season of Letterkenny, so it kind of flows with our theme here. I spent a lot of time there. Actually, my grandparents...

My father's side lived there when I was a kid, so I used to go up there all the time. It's just like a cool, just gritty, fun city with wild nightlife, all sorts of crazy shit going on. Big fan of it, and it's always had a crazy underworld, like insane organized crime,

I've always wanted to dive into it, whether it was the Rizzuto family, the bikers, the various sort of ethnic gangs there. There's a lot of really good stuff out there on it. And I think the CBC does a really good podcast called The Dark North. And for this episode, we use a lot of a book called The Sixth Family by a fantastic beat reporter, Adrian Humphries. And definitely buy that book if you want to know more because I'm sure I'll get stuff wrong. But yeah, I was always scared of the work involved with diving into this because there's so much good stuff out there. But...

Luckily, my brother, actually, my little brother wasn't, and he did all the research for this episode. So if something's wrong, like always, email Sean because we don't care. I don't care. Sean does. Anyway, there's also a pretty bad Netflix series based on the Montreal mob called Bad Blood with one of the guys from Sons of Anarchy. I guess it's like okay, but it's definitely not an underworld recommendation unless you're really bored. Is that Charlie Hunnam? Like the guy with the weirdest accent repertoire of anyone in Hollywood? Like...

apart from maybe Don Cheadle in Oceans 11 that's like that's just unforgivable but before I go off on like some mad tangent about Don Cheadle and I really could go off on that accent forever I do have a Montreal recce and it's actually called Killer Instinct it's the movie about French gangster Jacques Mesrine that we're going to cover on here soon actually going to do a show on him

Never been, though. I mean, I'm keen to hear about this crazy, bubbling underworld. I thought Montreal was just nice people and poutine and ice hockey. I don't know. Dude, fucking love poutine. Fucking love poutine. Dude, it's grimy. I mean, it's got an amazing cultural scene, but it's grimy, and you can get into some trouble there. We used to go up when I was 18 or 19 because...

You can't drink in the U.S. legally when you're 18 or 19, and the clubs there are insane. And, yeah, let's get into it. All right. Niccolo Rizzuto is the patriarch of the Rizzuto family and the father of Vito, the mobster from our cold open. And,

And he's born in Sicily in 1924 in some small town known for vineyards and olive trees, almond trees, you know, that sort of stuff. Yeah, narrows it down a bunch. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's every town in Sicily. But it's just, you know, real mustache Pete shit, as they say. Mustache Pete is a term they used to use for the old school mafiosos who came up in the old country.

Niccolo grows up doing rural Sicily things, which I think means, you know, herding goats and doing vendettas with his family, whatever. And when he's barely 20, he marries the daughter of a prominent mafia boss in the southwest of Sicily.

His wife was one of a bunch of this guy's daughters, and this guy marries them off to a bunch of other powerful mafia clans in the area, among them the Contrera and Caruana families, who will come into play later. I mean, it's a solid move, honestly. Like, very House of Dragons, very old royalty sort of move.

These clans eventually spread out all over the world. Super powerful in Venezuela, Germany, Brazil, the US, Canada. So, you know, it's good. It's good connections to have. Yeah, I mean, I'm rubbing my hands already because this is an Italian episode and you're going to do a load of Italian names. So that's going to be fun enough. But could you just repeat that first family name as well?

Contrera? Dude, I looked, I YouTubed it before to make sure that I got it right. I'm pretty, Contrera and Caruana. Cool. All right. I was just doing some highbrow comedy there. Yeah. Yeah, that was good. It was good. In 1946, Niccolo has a son, Vito, and eight years later, they hightail to Montreal, which, you know, has a nice growing Italian community and a bunch of other mafiosos had gotten the same idea in those years because the Italian police, uh,

had been applying pressure and the kind of heat was on. There'd been a mafia war down there and they were cracking down. Montreal is also kind of a hotspot because in the 1920s, the politicians running the city decide they want it to be a boom town by having a booming nightlife.

So they encourage all sorts of vice businesses to grow. I mean, soon there's a ton of brothels, bars, nightclubs, all that sort of stuff. I mean, even now, as Sean can tell you, you kind of ruined it by saying you've never been there. But anyway, we're going to pretend you hadn't said that. Even now, as Sean can tell you, the city is famous or was famous for its strip clubs. What's that place you always talk about, Sean? Club Super Sex? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's actually pronounced Super Sexy with like a Y. But yeah, yeah, I take the point.

Yeah, no, I mean, that was like the famous one. And I was the other thing too, back then, Montreal had a casino and like there weren't widespread casinos. So, you know, you'd go there, get hammered, go to the strip club, go to the casino. And it's a fun town. How's my endorsement? My life has definitely changed a bunch in the last 20 years or not. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're not doing that at all anymore.

Never. Anyway, Montreal has also a big international shipping port and a direct route to NYC with pretty much laid back border control back then at least. So it's wide open. And we do love a port city here on the Underworld podcast. And in real life too, actually.

There's got to be a way we can capitalize off that, right? Maybe there's like a short sort of underworld worldwide tour we can do at different port cities. Yeah, I fear for us, but I'm up for it if anyone wants to pay for the flights, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Montreal is such a hotspot for fun and vice that the then boss of the Bonanno family, Joseph Bonanno, he sends our other buddy from the cold open, Carmine Galante, there in 1953 to put some roots down and kind of see what's what.

Galanti hooks up with a guy by the name of Vinny Catroni, who was actually Calabrian, not Sicilian, and who happens to run a crime family there as well. This is important. The whole Sicilian versus Calabrian thing, you know, despite literally being right next to each other, Sicilians and Calabrians typically don't do their crimes together in intertwined families, right? You've got the actual mafia, which is the Sicilians, and the Andrangheta, which is the Calabrians.

I mean, it's fucking Europe, man, right? Hundreds of years of people who are in like Northwest Belgium doing a genocide against the people of Northeast Belgium for no reason over some fucking field they fought out over in like 1266. Maybe the Northeast Belgians just speak slightly different. Like you don't really know anything about this. Come on.

Yeah. Anyway, despite Sicily and Calabria both being Southern Italian, they didn't mix their crime time. So Controni, the Calabrian, he becomes the Bananos man in Montreal. He had become famous and got into starting like the 1930s when he hired his former wrestling coach and the two used baseball bats during the elections to enforce the will of the Quebec Liberal Party. So much so that they called it the baseball bat elections. Oh, that's nice. Did they set up a little like friendly little league game? That sounds pretty charming and Canadian. I mean...

Like, it's only this podcast makes me question at all whether everything in Canada isn't just nice and friendly and beautiful and great at all times. I mean, even the Mounties are like, you know, they're nice guys, right? Canadians are wild, man. People don't know. But yeah, baseball bats, old school mafia shit. And because of this, they end up, of course, having political connections going on for decades as they get to work with the usual extortion and, you know, all the other rackets.

Montreal at this time is also a key player in the French connection. We've talked about that before, how the Corsican mob moved heroin from Asia to Turkey to France, and then into Canada and the US. It gets going in the 1930s as well, and then really takes off throughout the 1960s. After World War II, the US ports had a lot more tight security, so Galante and the Bananos recognized that Montreal's ports would be useful because they could just smuggle it over the border into the states through that land border that was kind of wide open.

So they tap Catroni, this Calabrian, and a Sicilian guy named Luigi Greco to run things in Montreal under them. Catroni oversees the Calabrians, Greco oversees the Sicilians, and they figure this will keep the peace between the two groups and create a unified front. Both groups obviously still want the power and kind of tussle back and forth for it, but after a whole bunch of sit-downs, it's decided that Catroni is the boss, Greco is the second in command, and one of the guys that pledges himself to Greco, the Sicilian boss, is Nick Rizzuto.

Rizzuto becomes one of his soldiers. He starts earning. He's doing well. He's using his in-laws, you know, the ones that were in the other clans that are spread out all over, to start getting connections all over the world. Remember, you know, all his wives, sisters, married into the different mafia clans, right? Nick is also grooming his son Vito in the old school Sicilian methods. He's a bit of a slow learner, it seems, because in 1968, he's arrested for trying to help a friend burn down his barbershop for the insurance money. He gets sentenced to two years in prison in 1971.

I mean, that seems a pretty high sentence for not quite burning down some hairdressers, but all right. It's also like kind of like, you know, you would think this guy gets caught doing something stupid like this is not going to be extremely talented and smart in underworld affairs. But he he most definitely is.

So Vito, gonna do his little prison sentence in 1971. His dad Nick, though, is really getting things going. He's forging his connections with the in-laws spread out across the world, one of whom is the Contrera Caruana clan, who are operating in Venezuela and by then have established a reputation as the bankers of the mafia because they're so good at money laundering and international drug trafficking after starting off as nothing more than security for a local land baron.

By the early 90s, there were even rumors that they had acquired 60% of Aruba through investments in hotels, casinos, and the election campaign of a prime minister. And I just watched like a 10-minute ABC News piece on the drug trade in the 80s, I think, that talks about the Contrera Caruana clan. And they're just like hanging out in Venezuela without a problem because there was no extradition for Venezuelan citizens back then. And there was just a ton of... Aruba's like Dutch or something though? Like...

Yeah, that was in the 90s. This was in the 80s, but it talked about how much investment they had in Venezuela as well. And the people there just being like, yeah, you know, they were interviewing all the cops there and politicians who were like, yeah, they poured a lot of money into the economy here and blah, blah, blah.

And yeah, they seemed like they had a really good thing going on. I think the main part of the report was how the Colombians were moving to Venezuela and starting to traffic from there. But yeah, it was fascinating, actually. I didn't know a lot about the Contrera Caruana clan, so it was interesting to learn that. But back to the late 1960s, early 1970s, Nick has his big-time connections in Sicily and South America, and now he's connected to New York through Greco. And his son Vito also marries a woman who is part of the Toronto Sicilian family that runs things.

So these connections really are forming everywhere, all through family and little Sicilian village contacts, you know? This is like one of those New York Times pieces on how I bought a Manhattan free bed by skipping brunch and all I started with was just a measly $2 million loan from my trader parents or something. Nick's a mafia trust fund kid, right? I know, right? This is like the Nepo baby thing is a big...

part of the discourse right now. Did we hit the culture? We did. We're finally hitting the discourse angle right now. Did we put that in the title? The mafia nepo baby who went on to control things? Probably not. I don't think our audience goes for that kind of shit. But anyway, at the same time as this is going on, there's some tension building in Montreal.

The second-in-command Sicilian, Greco, he's willing to accept his role under the Calabrian Cutronis, but he's still not happy. He's got heroin profits, nightclubs, restaurants, and of course, a pizzeria. But things are getting so hot that even the New York Times is reporting on this potential mob war building in Montreal. And then weirdly, Greco dies while renovating his pizzeria.

If you'll permit me some anti-Italian discrimination, I mean, what the fuck is going on there, right? Apparently, he's scrubbing a floor. He takes a mop that for some reason is dipped in kerosene. This somehow results in a fireball and he's killed. I mean, nothing gets out Gabagool like jet fuel, but seriously, what the actual fuck is going on there? That's insane.

What a way for, for a Sicilian man to die. Just a, uh, industrial cleaning accident in your pizzeria that you run as a front for, for your mob money. I don't know, dude. It's a, it's a lot. Yeah. It's slightly comical. No, no, no insult intended to my, I love a Sicilian pizza place. You know, who's my, that's my guy. Oh yeah. You met, you met my Sicilian pizza guy, didn't you? When you stayed here?

I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Top guy. Yeah, he's got seven brothers in Sicily, and he's like, dude, anytime you want to go, you have a different house to stay in every night. And I'm like, I got to fucking...

make this happen. Why do we piss about in these cities? Yeah, we should just go to Sicily and do this show. Yeah, what are we doing? What are we doing? Anyway, Nick Mazzuto, by this time, he's pretty powerful himself. He's basically the man you go see in the Italian community in Montreal when you show up, when you need help, all that sort of stuff. And he gets a lot of help with Sicilian mafiosos coming over from the old country and joining him. Cotrone, though, he doesn't see it that way.

He says, fuck the Sicilians, and he brings in his own guy, a Calabrian connected to the Andrangheta by the name of Paolo Violi. And Violi is no slouch. The guy is basically extorting the whole city at this point. So what we have is Greco, the guy who was running stuff for the Sicilians, second command. He's dead. Catroni doesn't elevate another Sicilian. He brings in his own guy who's Calabrian, and obviously this is going to be a problem.

In 1975 in Montreal, there's a mafia commission before the government. An underworld figure says this about Violi. Quote, my lord, his name, it's like a god. Everyone is afraid of him. Violi, he's not one man. He's a thousand men. That's from the book I mentioned earlier, The Sixth Family by Adrian Humphreys. Buy it.

Rizzuto is not a fan of Violi. And Violi and Controni, they don't like Rizzuto since he's doing his own thing. He's not really abiding by the mafia structure where they were in control, and things aren't looking too peaceful for Montreal streets at this point. Now, of course, Violi and Controni, they could make a move on Rizzuto, but he's got control of the international drug trafficking routes, which are becoming a big deal. And all this connects their Sicilians. So it's not like the Calabrians can kill off Rizzuto and just take over, right?

These guys are also related to Rizzuto, but still no one is happy. Rizzuto wants control of the city. The Calabrians want us trafficking connects. And things are just not shaping up to be positive, I would say. They end up in this low-level dispute for like seven years. And everyone from New York to the real Sicilian mafia clans, the Calabrian and Jargueta, they're all trying to mediate because they all need Montreal to function. Could you paint a picture of Nick Rizzuto at this point? I want to know what the guy looks like. Is he kind of scary looking? Yeah.

No, he was like, I don't think he was scary looking. These guys were like really old school. You know, they dressed really well. They were conservative in their demeanor and how they acted. They loved going to like, you know, high level casinos all over the world, fancy restaurants, drinking like expensive cognac. They were that sort of level, you know, where they were like,

very smart, very slick operators. They weren't guys in tracksuits with like, you know, bad tattoos. They were, they were classy, sort of like the classic mafia type, very old school Sicilian, very smart. Yeah.

Very dappled. I was kind of thinking of the guy, what was the Boston guy that got in with the triads that you did that great show about? I was kind of picturing him in my head somehow. No, no. Spiky hair and like puma tracksuits and stuff. No, no. Think like classy old Italian man playing bocce ball in a backyard. Beautiful. Wearing like, wearing a great hat. Yeah.

That's sort of drinking like a tiny... Yeah, drinking a tiny... I mean, that is... My fashion goals are to dress like an old Italian man playing bocce. I feel like that's just the look that just works out. Anyway...

Finally, there's a sit down with the Baino family in New York. They refuse to kick out Rizzuto like Violi wants, but they tell Nick he needs to show respect. Rizzuto isn't happy with the way things are handled, so he says, fuck it, I'm going to Venezuela with my in-laws. A lot of mafia types are heading there anyway because it's wide open, the drugs are flowing, and the Venezuelan government back then doesn't care.

Also, quick side note, one of the reasons we know a lot of this is because for six years, Violi had an undercover cop living above the bar he used as a base who used surveillance equipment on a ton of shit. Wait, this is a little bit slapstick. So there's just some guy living above their main HQ with a ton of listening gear and I'm presuming like a van with flowers by Irene parked out front? Yeah.

Yeah, or the Canadian version of Flowers by Irene. I don't know what they call the Mounties. I got no idea. I should probably know that. Oh, no. Meanwhile, back in Montreal, the government has started that public inquiry into the mafia, which that's really, that kind of, I feel like that happened in the States too in the 70s. It's actually really interesting. A lot of the episodes we've done, whether it's on like, you know, when it's involving crime in the U.S. or crime that comes into the U.S. that's organized.

They have these commissions in the government, in like the Congress or the Senate, and you get this really fascinating stuff that comes out there. Like a lot of these guys take the Fifth. It was really big in the '70s and '80s. You know, there was one about the Russian mob, there was one about the Asian mobs that were coming in, obviously the Italian mob had a bunch before then. And I mean, it's fascinating. It always makes for fun transcripts to read.

In the States, these guys love the Fifth Amendment, like love it. Catroni and Violi are called to testify at the commission, which lasts five years. They both kind of do the Canadian version, I guess, of taking the Fifth. Each gets a year of contempt, but also the tapes from the undercover operation on Violi, they're made public, and he kind of looks like a schmuck. So now Rizzuto starts to think, maybe this guy is weak, and I need to make a move. But he still needs some time. Also around then, his son Vito is released from prison after the arson arrest, and he heads to Venezuela to link up with his dad.

So, like, as we're recording this, I guess, like, the SPF stuff is still in the news. Do you think he should have gone to Venezuela instead of the Bahamas? Was it some island that he went to or something? It seems kind of dumb to hide from the feds on a sparsely populated island in the Caribbean. I don't know. I mean, they're not hiding like no one's going to track him down. And I think their operation was based in the Bahamas. But, yeah, I mean, he should have gone somewhere that didn't have as...

you know, tight and extradition policy with the U S and the Bahamas. I mean, you go to like Venezuela or fucking, I don't know, Damascus or, uh, or North Korea or I don't know, Hong Kong, you know, right now you're not, you're not gonna, you're not getting extradited from there. What, um, what's the Malaysian dude? I love that dude. Jay, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe,

We need to do the show about him, by the way. That really needs to happen soon. Oh, yeah, he's great. I think my cousins or uncle lived in Namibia for a while, and they knew a guy there who was living there because he was facing charges in the U.S. I don't know, man. The point is that you find a country that doesn't like the U.S. or doesn't have extradition treaties. And, yeah, Venezuela. And also Caracas can be fun, from what I hear. I mean, we need to find a pithy way of putting that on a T-shirt. But, yeah, we'll work on it.

Yeah, we'll figure that out. On Valentine's Day in 1976, the Rizzutos make their move. A masked gunman takes out one of Violi's top guys when he's at a movie date with his wife, which is just ruthless. On Valentine's Day. A year later, Rizzuto assassins take out Violi's brother, who also happens to be his top enforcer. Then a year after that, Paolo himself gets taken out in his own bar by a masked gunman while he's playing cards.

But the Rizzutos aren't finished and they need to finish the job. There's another Violi brother who isn't a major player and someone on the back of a motorcycle blasts him through his car window with a shotgun. He somehow survives. But then in October 1980, a sniper takes him out through a window when he's sitting down for dinner with his family because the Rizzutos, they do not play around. No, Jesus Christ. That just steps up a few notches in a few short seconds. Yeah.

Yeah, and keep that sniper attack in the back of your mind because that's going to come back in a way. In the back of your head. Yeah, it's going to come back in the back of one of the Rizzuto's heads, which is not pleasant. At this point, the Rizzuto's basically control all of Montreal and they're preparing a spicy meatball. That's right. It is time for the pizza connection, which was the heroin ring that came after the French connection was broken up.

The Rizzutos, they link up with their bros in Venezuela, the Contrera and Calrana clans. They end up running the heroin trade pretty much all over the world. At one point, they're shipping like 70% of the world's heroin supply. And a lot of it comes in through Montreal, then gets smuggled over the border into the U.S. and onto pizza places in New York and New Jersey. It doesn't last too long. It's broken up in like 1984. But the Rizzutos, of course, escaped unscathed. And also, I mean, that's just...

That's classic, man. You know, just running heroin out of pizzerias in New York and New Jersey. You can't, you just can't beat that. It's like a Sopranos B-plot, you know? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's better than running the pedophile ring out of a pizza joint, but...

Yeah. That's probably another podcast. Yeah. That's the sort of tip. You can have us on as guests, you know? Yeah. No, we're not going down that route. And the pizza connection is kind of typical for them, right? They leverage these big time international connections. More lazy racism. They make a ton of cash and they get away with it against all the odds. I mean, these guys are sharp. Their people don't talk. You know, they really are very old school in a way that people just used to pretend they were. For the risotto, it's like they have shit on lock, but...

But let's back up a bit to go a little more in detail with the heroin. 1981, that's when that hit from the cold open happens, during the internal banana war. With that, the Rizzutos are tied into the Bananos and the other five families, or the other four families, and they're pouring in heroin to the US market based out in New York. So much so that not only does the price significantly drop, but American mobsters could simply take heroin out on credit without down payment.

A former undercover drug agent, as reported in The Sixth Family, he describes the heroin market like this, quote, it was take it, take it, just take the fucking stuff. Move it, pay what you can, just take it off my hands. I got more coming. I mean, it's so American that even heroin dealers are getting stuff on credit. But I feel like I feel like I probably want cash up front.

If I was a major heroin shipper or whatever, but I don't know. I mean, I don't know anything. I don't even have a credit card. Biggie warned about getting shit on consignment. It can really backfire. But I think the point is that they had so much. They were just like, fuck it. We're so flush with it and they were so powerful that they could just do that.

It's interesting that there's, like, no room for other heroin routes around the world, right? You've got this, like, Corsican route, the French connection for so many years, then the pizza connection for a few years, and then suddenly, I'm guessing, like, after this is when the Southeast Asian heroin route really starts to kick into gear. I'm not... It doesn't even seem to be a competing route for these. Well, I think...

I think, though, a lot of the heroin was coming from Southeast Asia at that point. Or Pakistan, maybe. You know, I don't have the details in front of me. I know we did it in our... In our Afghanistan episode, we talked about the different routes and how they worked and which countries would pop up. And I know around the late 70s, early 80s, it was definitely popping up a lot in Afghanistan or over the border in Pakistan. I think before that was the Southeast Asia route. But, yeah, I mean, this is just...

This is the route they're getting it into the country. I'm not 100% sure where it's being grown and where they're getting it from manufactured. Yeah, yeah.

But the Rizzutos are controlling it, and they're making a killing. And they're back and forth to Sicily, Venezuela, Montreal, while controlling pretty much all the rackets in Montreal, you know, the usual extortion, loan sharking, street gambling, all that sort of stuff, while dodging indictments left and right through any means possible. At one point, two top members are indicted in New York with one of the Gottis, but they manage to get Sam in the bowl to pay a juror 10K and get found innocent.

Things don't go as well in Venezuela, though. In 1988, Niccolo and his crew are arrested over a kilo of coke they probably just had lying around somewhere. He gets held for a little bit, but Vito is now facing increased federal attention in Montreal over drug trafficking, which is a lot more serious than getting arrested in Venezuela at that time, because you can just pay your way out pretty quickly.

Still, the Rizzutos are unstoppable and keep expanding all over the world. They just operated on a whole other level from most other organized crime, and they worked with everyone. They weren't just like a bunch of guys in Bensonhurst and tracksuits. No disrespect to guys in Bensonhurst and tracksuits.

I think that was disrespectful as a track citizen Benson asked. Yeah, it kind of was actually, you're right. The Katronis had actually been importing hash from the Christian phalangists in Lebanon, right? That's a fascist militia that was, you know, they, I think this is late 70s, 80s. So they were involved in the civil war there and they were pretty brutal, but the Rizudos took over that route. By the late 80s, it's estimated that 90% of the hashish in Canada came from Lebanon and the Rizudos were controlling, I think, all of it.

all of it. The Rizzutos then open up another route, linking up with an Irish gang in Montreal called the West End Gang, and form a connection with them to the IRA and the Irish mob in Boston. They also get hash connections from Pakistan and Libya, and they're like the gangland UN at this point, you know? Yeah, it's nuts. I mean, they're everywhere. And Nepal, I'm guessing they're getting stuff from, which is a show we got coming up. Oh yeah, how's that going? You were there, you were in Nepal.

I was in Nepal. Actually, a couple of days ago, I was fielding extremely angry calls from some weird conspiracist, former drug smuggler from Nepal. So I can probably say a little bit more about that in the show. Dude, why can't everyone just leave us alone? Fucking, you know. Like nine to five, guys. Yeah, come on. Fucking Christmas Eve lawsuits and fuck. Anyway, you know, I'm the guy that owes us money. I'm giving him the next 10 days off.

Are you using this show to actually give him a time limit on when he's going to pass? No, I'm just like, it's the holidays. You know what I'm saying? It's the holidays. Have a soul. Don't send us the lawsuit at December 23rd at 5pm. What the fuck is that? It's Christmas. Have a soul. Or come around and break your legs. No, we won't do that. After the holidays. These guys, they have their hand in every drug route in the world. And they're connected to everyone. They're like...

They're like the Coca-Cola of drug traffickers, basically. Fido actually gets arrested twice with two different boat shipments of hash value at around $450 million when they're seized off the coast of Quebec a few months apart. But of course, the government's cases soon fall apart because they're the Rizzutos. And one of them, a star witness, actually ends up trying to extort the Rizzutos to not testify, which the ball's on that guy.

But the Rizuto's lawyer, they record his attempt and the government ends up having to charge the witness with obstruction as their case against the Rizuto's falls apart. I mean, this is like better call Saul, like see plots at this point. The second one falls apart because the government bugs some restaurant for some entirely different case, they say. But it just happens to be the one where Vito eats dinner every night with his lawyers. Busboy finds the bug in like a lamp. All hell breaks loose and the judge ends up ruling the bug was illegal and the government violated Vito's rights.

I don't know I mean something like that like but either way the case falls apart and now the police are actually on the defensive and have to promise not to go after Vito unless they have something airtight because the department is just so embarrassed with what's or has been embarrassed because of what's happening

It should be said, too, like I mentioned before, the Rizzutos just aren't flashy, right? They were like the actual, they weren't like the actual Teflon Don, John Gotti, who was everywhere chasing media attention. They kept a low profile. In the Sixth Family book, they quote an underworld source who says about Vito and the Rizzutos, quote, they are very, very, very conservative people, extremely conservative.

Anytime there was any commotion or any attention, that was a bad thing. Things you wouldn't think would be a problem were, if you saw them in a restaurant and called them out by name, that would be a problem. If you were drunk and loud in a bar and saw them and came over to them, that would be a problem. They are actually very boring people. I mean, I think they definitely had their fun and went to a lot of high class places and did stuff like that, but the point is that they weren't out of control. They were good temperaments, not wild. They were proper businessmen in a way. Yeah.

And the international links just keep coming. You know, there's one venture they're working with the Big Circle Boys, which is an international Asian crime syndicate, moving heroin from Asia to Canada and through on to the States. They're also still moving cocaine from North America back to Europe to take advantage of price discrepancies in the market. I mean, these guys are sharp. And this is from a police dossier on the Rizzutos in 1997. They were said to have investments in Saudi Arabia with the suspected help of a royal family member.

They were importing wood products and wood flooring from China and other investments in China, investments in Algeria and the UAE, investments in Cuba, alleged infiltration of public works programs in Italy, drug importation, airport servicing in Haiti, gambling enterprises in Belize. It's insane. You put these in the episode spreadsheet. I mean, I feel like each one of these bullet points could be its own show, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, it's pretty insane.

Between them and the Kuntra family and all that, it really was a global... Yeah, it's pretty insane. They might have been the richest or most powerful mafia of Osos ever at one point, even though obviously they didn't have an army.

A bit behind the curtain that we even have a spreadsheet that's about as organized as we get for doing episodes. I mean, these guys, they're so keyed in, they outgrow the need for the New York links, right? And the New Yorkers were supposed to be the most powerful ever. They don't need the Bananos. Things come to a head in 1999 when the Banano boss orders the murder of the Rizzuto's main guy in New York, fearing the Rizzuto's having too much influence in the city. Then in 2001, he tries to make them an offer they can't refuse, which is making Vito into a captain.

But at that point, you know, he's so big internationally and probably more powerful and rich than them. It'd be like a step down. So he says no, which officially severes the ties. I actually heard on that one on the Dark North podcast, they say that Vito said that he couldn't accept it because they had to offer it to his father.

because it would be disrespectful to take it over his father, but I don't know. They'd also at that point just stop paying tribute to the Bananos. They just stopped, which was generally a thing that you didn't do when it came to the New York crime or any crime family, but there was nothing they could do at this point. And it wasn't just drug trafficking, right? These guys had this diversified portfolio, just quite strong to extremely strong.

In 1995, the Canadian police bust up a counterfeit money operation where the Rizzutos were printing country dollar bills and selling them for like $15. $24 million of that press was found all over Canada and the U.S. And that was by no means the first press they did. They also operated a massive online gambling scheme, which was said to have brought in close to $400 million one year. They had all the protection rackets, you know, the PIZO. PIZO, what do they call it? PIZO? PIZO? Yeah. PIZO.

Yeah.

Mayors in Quebec went down on fraud charges for doing deals with them. I think a couple. One in Montreal, I think, and one in Laval. But I'm not positive on the Montreal one. But no Bitcoin, no crypto at this point.

No, not yet. Not yet. A couple of funny ones, too. I mean, they were helping the New Jersey family that Sopranos are based on smuggling Persian rugs from Iran, which were banned. And it really is amazing the fucking grifts that these mobsters get up to sometimes. Like, anything, any way they can make a dollar, no matter how small it seems. Although, I mean, this was like a small-time business, but it seemed like they really enjoyed it. They were found on wiretaps making cracks about being rug runners and rug traffickers, which, you know, it's pretty funny. Yeah.

And then there's this time Vito claimed to have a mandate from a general in the Philippines to recover the gold of Ferdinand Marcos after he died. He actually went to Switzerland, the Philippines, Hong Kong to try to get it. But it's not they don't think that he actually came through with it. I mean, that is in Switzerland, mate. That's got to be like in that vault with all the Nazi gold and the Jewish paintings. I mean, come on. It's got to be there.

Fucking Swiss. They still owe my family money. What the Rizzutos were really known for, though, is their ability to work with anyone and everyone and form alliances. They got shit done. And if you wanted to get money, you got with the Rizzutos. Though usually it was the other way around. You were lucky if they tapped you.

We're going to have to do a story on the Quebec biker war one day because it's just fucking insane. But for now, Mambouché, and I hope I'm pronouncing that last name right, was the head of the Hells Angels chapter in Quebec called the Quebec Nomads. I think they patched over. They patched over a lot of other people. I don't remember the exact specifics for this short story, but the thing to know is he ran things with the bikers, was a real violent psycho. But a bunch of dealers who got product from him got sick of it and formed their own alliance, and they went to the Rizzutos to get a better price.

Boucher complained to the Rizzutos, but they weren't trying to hear it. And he couldn't go after them, right? Because they're Rizzutos. So the bikers went to war against each other. And it led to something like 160 murders in like five or 10 years. Oh, yeah. That's one we're going to cover later this year for sure. Yeah. Also, what does patched over mean? I think just be good to give people an idea of what that means.

I think it's when you bring in... You're not in the actual club, but they bring you into the club. You're in a different club and they patch you over. They make your club or your smaller club a part of their bigger club. So they just put their patch on yours kind of thing? I don't know. I mean, I'm not... Yeah. I've never done anything in real life or otherwise on biker gangs. So I'm not...

I'm not that familiar with the, uh, with how everything works in that world. All I've done is read the, uh... We got some, uh, we got some bikies coming up in next week's episode, actually, so, um... Oh, yeah. I'll try and unpick that a little bit more, yeah. Wait, what is next week's episode? Oh, the Sydney Gang Wars. So we got all kinds of crazy shit going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, wait, but with the, um...

the Lebanese gangs, right? Like the, those guys that are killing each other. Like there's that crazy. Afghans. We've got common chair rows and hells. There's that crazy. There's that crazy stabbing in the prison. Have you seen that video? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dude, that's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. We'll be hearing all about that next week. Yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. Good. You're on it. All right. This is actually good for the Rizzutos, this mob war, this biker war. Since the police are so focused on the bikers, they leave them alone for the most part. But Vito's actually really impressed with Boucher. And they work out an agreement where Vito and the Rizzutos are going to be the sole drug suppliers for the Hells Angels, who are massive in Canada, through Vito's South America connections, with the help of the Irish West End gang, who ran the Port of Montreal. Yeah.

And they reach this agreement, they call it a consortium, and they're basically gonna run a monopoly on the entire supply of drugs in Montreal, setting the price and just kind of going from there. Something like that's never really been done before. It's like a bad Netflix movie, which actually, it became a bad Netflix TV show. But that's just the kind of guy that Vito was. He could work with anyone. Things get so organized with the Rizzutos, they don't actually end up having to touch the product at all or have it in their possession.

The Six Family quotes an investigator saying, quote,

I mean, I feel like the risk of imprisonment is kind of the big one when doing drug deals. But I think what the quote means is that like there was no safety issue, right? He never had to touch it. So it wasn't like anyone could ambush him or anything like that. But yeah, I feel like the imprisonment usually one of the big risks. It's not risky at all. It's not risky at all, but you could go to prison for it. That's all I'm saying. It's not risky at all, except he's a risk... Whatever. Whatever.

Eventually, things get way too hot with the biker war, though. There's a bunch of civilians that are killed, including an 11-year-old boy. Some prison guards get killed, as well as Montreal's best crime reporter. He gets shot in the paper's parking lot six times, but he survives. So Vito tells the bikers they gotta calm things down, and they do. But by the end of 2001, the Canadian authorities, they're so fed up, they conduct this giant raid on the bikers with 2,000 officers. They arrest 128 people, and the Rizzuto family, of course, dies.

is left untouched. Around the same time, Vito focuses his energy on unifying some other warring mafia groups that were in British Columbia and Toronto, eventually asserting himself as the king of the entire Canadian underworld. I feel like that title needs some New York snark from you. Nah, man, I know too much about the Canadians now to do that. I was going to say, the Canadians sound fucking crazy, so...

One thing the Dark North podcast mentions is that Vito actually was a little worried or they claim that the Rizzutos were a little worried about the bikers unifying under under mom. He actually went to Toronto and D.C. and was like, look to the to the, you know, the mafia clans or all them and was like, hey, you know, the bikers are unifying and they're going to pose a threat unless we all unify as well.

Which is an interesting theory because he's also, I guess, you know, you're doing business, but you're still worried and all that. But the walls are unfortunately closing in on the Rizzutos. One of their big partners, the Carana Clan guy, he had relocated to Toronto. He gets arrested in a big operation called Project Omerta. That's in the late 90s. And then in January of 2004, Vito gets arrested for the murder of the three captains in New York from way back, the banana thing.

A whole bunch of other Bananos are arrested. A lot of them flip. And actually one of the guys who kind of starts this, one of the main guys who flips is this guy Chris Paciello, who I think is going to be the focus of one of our next few episodes. That's a really good story.

Vito is locked up in Canada. He's fighting extradition to the States. But with him locked up and facing charges all over, the underworld peace in Montreal starts to fall apart. Alliances break down as people scramble for power and restart old grudges. There's no one like Vito, right, who can hold everything in check. He often played the role of mediator between all these different gangs, whether it was the bikers, the Irish, the street gangs, the mafia, the independents.

And he generally had the respect and presence to keep the peace. But he's gone, and people start getting killed left and right, and moving on the risottos. And just when things aren't bad enough, with Vito facing charges in Canada and the U.S., the Italian police come calling.

There was talk in Italy, there was this plan to build a bridge between Calabria and Sicily, which I mean, yikes. Imagine doing a giant $6 billion government construction project between the two places in the world most famous for organized crime, run by the most powerful organizations. Like, damn.

But the Italian government actually does something, though, and discovers a criminal plot to control the building of the bridge, which is led by none other than Vito Rizzuto, heading up the entire conspiracy. And that's how powerful and impressive this guy was. He's a Montreal guy, but he's heading up the conspiracy that spanned Sicily and Calabria.

Yeah, I actually looked up the history of this bridge and it is crazy. It's like cancelled, revived, cancelled, revived over and over again. And even as recent as 2015, people are saying it's going to go ahead. It's going to become the longest suspension bridge on earth. And pub quiz time, the longest one in the world is in Turkey. Is that interesting or not?

I mean, for like a line. It's in the show now, so, you know, you can take it or leave it. Better be. The Italian police, though, they're going to have to wait to get their crack at him because he loses his extradition fight and ends up in New York pleading guilty to one count of racketeering in relation to murder.

And the Canadian lawmen, they actually decide to go full on on the Rizzutos too. They launch the largest ever police op against the Canadian criminal organization in history at that time. A bunch of the Rizzuto higher-ups get arrested. This intense investigation has been going on and has been for years. And the Rizzuto family is now an even bigger target with the boss locked up and them being on their back legs with law enforcement.

Someone on a motorcycle tries to kill one of the street bosses, opening up on him when he's in the back of his Cadillac, and the Rizzuto family moves into war mode. You know, bodyguards, no less than 30 deep, all that. That's when the police decide they need to make their move before the all-out war happens, and in November of 2006, they arrest 91 members and associates of the Rizzuto family. The whole operation actually costs like $50 million, which is huge for Canada.

Nearly all the high-ranking members are arrested, and Vito's son, Nick Jr., he takes over things. Nearly all the members actually plead guilty, and no one really talks, so it doesn't knock out the organization completely.

A year later is when Vito had pled guilty. He gets 10 years, and later that year, the Italian police, they break up the consortium and arrest a bunch of bankers and businessmen and gangsters and announce charges on Vito and his dad. But they're locked up with the other high-ranking members, of course, and now a mob war for control breaks out in Montreal, and it's gonna last over a decade. It's insane. All sorts of firebombs and killings. We might have to do another full episode on it eventually.

rival clans, former Rizzuto associates, street gangs, bikers, it's just an anarchic mess.

And it's too much to go into detail for this episode. Vito's son, Nick Jr., is gunned down in broad daylight just after Christmas in 2009. His brother-in-law is grabbed off the street by two men dressed like cops and never seen again. Then one of the leaders of the Contrera Caruana Clan steps in to take control with bodyguards, armored car, all that. But he's gunned down pretty quickly too. Shit is just wild. I mean, this podcast has already ruined my image of Stockholm and various other cities and now...

And now I'm going to add Montreal to the list. It just sounds like a war zone. Yeah, I mean, there's just decade-long gang wars in this country all over. Like, go back and listen to the Vancouver episode. That stuff is still going on. I want to do a part two on that. I mean, it's just wild. But with Vito in prison, his son is just murdered, but the

but the attacks on the Rizzuto family don't stop. Nick Senior is 85 years old. He steps back in to head things up, but shortly after, he's killed at his kitchen table by a high-powered sniper rifle, just like the Violi hit from, I don't know, 20 minutes ago.

So as Vito is sitting in prison, both his son and his dad are killed in the span of like a few years. It just fucked up, man. So keep him getting out and like going nuts is like the perfect plot for a terrible Jason Statham movie. Wait, Jason Statham movie or terrible movie? Pick one. Fair play. Fair play. At this point, though, everyone is at war with everyone in Montreal. Yeah.

The Rizzuto family are what's left of it. They're getting it from every direction. The feds and Canadian police, they're visiting Vito in prison, trying to get him to flip, but he doesn't actually. And he gets out in 2012 and heads back to Montreal for their serious protection to start taking stake of things. And right away, some people who had turned away from Rizzuto's, you know, they fall back under his guard right away. It's not just that Vito's on the war path, but also he was so effective. People saw him get out and they're like, okay, we're back with him.

but Vito goes to work, right? And within a month, a former associate who tried to take charge is gunned down. Another guy who didn't take sides but didn't side with the Rizzutos, he's wiped out in Sicily. Then the guy who reportedly killed his dad is killed. Another Calabrian that turned away from the Rizzutos after being with them initially is gunned down in Acapulco. I mean, he's on a global revenge tour of just knocking people out who, not only the ones who went against him, but the others who didn't stand up for the Rizzuto family, right? The ones who didn't take sides. Yeah.

You know, they've been the premier organized mafia family the last 50 years. They were just so all encompassing that Vito has these connections. He can get you killed anywhere.

Vito is reasserting his power, he's taking over, and then he just dies. He had had lung cancer for a while, but no one really knew. And in December, right before Christmas 2013, he passes away from pneumonia. And it's just the end of an era. His other son, Leonardo, he's allegedly in charge now. He recently got arrested on a coke and gun charge, but like, you know, he's not Vito. Or Nick Sr. even. But they're, you know, it's just, uh...

The Rizzuto's, their best days are behind them. Yeah, I mean, the rich kids, they never are, right? It's the succession rule.

Yeah. Nepo. Yeah. Nepo. Although I guess Vito was, and he was pretty dominant. But anyway, I want to leave you guys with a fun story because it reminds me of one of my favorite Soprano scenes when they're trying to shake down the coffee bean, right? Pizza Hut had been expanding into Montreal with 12 stores, and they were set to open their flagship location across the street from the pizzeria run by one of the Montreal mob guys. So the mafia dudes obviously don't like that.

So they take to burning down the coming soon sign, but the franchisee is not a mafia guy. He's just the Jewish guy in Montreal, so he has no idea what's going on. He doesn't get the message. He just buys a new sign. So the mobsters, they light a fire in the place again, but it gets put out, and things go on. There's not that much damage done, so Pizza Hut just continues building, and the mobsters grow more and more frustrated...

For the next attack, they contract a Hell's Angel member to do arson. He uses all these explosive charges in a professional job. There was more damage, but the building remains intact, so they keep building. So PepsiCo, the owner of Pizza Hut, was alerted to the problem, and they become kind of upset. And they start to dig in and realize it was a Moffat-related thing, so they go to the cops. And PepsiCo is a giant conglomeration, so when they go to the cops, they're going to take it seriously. And they kind of start giving them a hard time, and the cops are like...

All right, this can't stand. So they go after the Rizzitos a bit. They confiscate like 40 illegal video poker machines around the city and kind of tell them that like, tell Vito it's because of Pizza Hut. So they call Vito's lawyer and they ask to meet his lawyer and Vito. They come into the police station and Vito says he has no involvement. He has no involvement in this. And the cop's like, all right, whatever, but it's got to stop either way. And yeah, then Pizza Hut is left alone. So no matter how powerful a mafia is,

They'll never, they can't win versus Pizza Hut, I think is the moral of the story. I mean, I feel like you put this at the end as some comic relief, but actually, after all this death and drugs and extortion and everything, like, I'd have been far more happy if the Pizza Hut had been scorched and burned to the ground anyway. You'll never win a war. You'll never win a war versus Pizza Hut. It's like going to battle against Waffle Hut employees. You know, it's just not going to work. Yeah.

Yeah, man. I mean, these risottos sound absolutely insane. Like, is there anything they didn't have their paws in? Like car parts or sex toys or...

I don't know anything else, but it's probably just going to be a yes to everything, right? If they're selling Persian rugs and, and fucking trying to, always on the hustle. I also just called it waffle hut, not waffle house. Cause I was saying pizza hut, but I stand corrected. Don't fuck with waffle house employees. That should be one of our new mottos. Anyway, uh, that is it as always. Patreon.com slash in a world podcast to support us or on iTunes. Give us money so we can keep doing this. And, uh, until next week.