Adrian Humphreys
The latest victim of Montreal’s Mob violence — shot dead by masked gunmen Monday in a Rivière-des-Prairies restaurant — was recently named in court in Italy as a member of the rebellious faction of mobsters fighting to overthrow Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto.
Antonino Callocchia, usually called Tonino or Tony, was hit Monday afternoon by multiple bullets from one or more masked gunmen who then fled.
It was the second attempt on Callocchia’s life; on Feb. 1, 2013, he was seriously injured in a similar ambush in a restaurant in Laval.
Born Nov. 6, 1961, his ties to the Mafia in Montreal have been documented for decades. Part of his underworld strength came through his link by marriage to the Armeni clan of well-known Mob-linked drug traffickers. One of his first arrests, according to Quebec Court records, was in 1985 alongside four members of clan, although he was acquitted.
He was also arrested in a landmark money laundering and drug trafficking case in Montreal in 1994 alongside notable Mobsters and lawyers who helped invest Mob money linked to Mr. Rizzuto.
But before his death, the enigmatic man was moving from the criminal sidelines and becoming more central to the city’s underworld.
The move brought increased scrutiny over his standing and allegiance in the Mafia war that has rocked Montreal — a sweeping power struggle between Rizzuto and rebels trying to oust him when he was imprisoned in the United States in 2006. The war went badly against the Rizzutos until the boss returned to Canada in October 2012 and fought to reclaim his position of power.
Some saw Callocchia as a Rizzuto loyalist and even a possible successor to Vito Rizzuto — who died of natural causes in December 2013. His involvement in a case of extortion against a woman with ties to Raynald Desjardins, a gangster named in Italian court as the leader of the rebellious faction, furthered that view.
Others saw his closeness to Calabrian dissidents unfriendly toward the Sicilian-born Rizzuto as well as to Joseph Di Maulo, an influential Mafia boss killed in 2012, likely for not remaining loyal to Rizzuto, as a sign he, too, had strayed.
Callocchia, however, was subject to a recent assessment by the anti-Mafia police in Sicily, the birthplace of the Mafia, as they investigated the murders in Palermo of two Mobsters from Canada.
Police in Italy are analyzing reams of secretly recorded telephone calls made last year by a Mobster from Canada who was living in Sicily. The chatty mobster, Juan Ramon Fernandez, was close to Rizzuto for decades and spoke disrespectfully of Callocchia when talking to other Rizzuto loyalists.
Fernandez called him “a fucking idiot,” according to wiretap transcripts obtained by the National Post.
A few days after the 2013 attack on Callocchia, Fernandez phoned for an update from a friend in Montreal, identified in court as Antonio Carbone who was described as a veteran Montreal Mobster close to the Rizzutos.
The two spoke of the attacks against enemies of Vito Rizzuto; Callocchia was named on a list of perceived opponents.
The authorities in Italy note that Callocchia was shot the first time while Rizzuto was travelling to the Dominican Republic to meet in privacy with acolytes to plot revenge against those who were disloyal to him and his family while he was in prison.
While Rizzuto was out of the country, “the offensive against the ‘dissident’ faction was unleashed,” says a report on the Mafia war prepared by the Carabinieri ROS, Italy’s anti-Mafia police unit, and presented in court last month.
Monday’s murder of Callocchia came after months of relative peace within Montreal’s underworld after shocking displays of murder and violence.
Callocchia was pronounced dead around 1:30 p.m. inside Bistro XO Plus, a restaurant in a plaza on Henri-Bourassa Blvd. E. near LJ-Forget Ave.
“He was a big player (within the Mafia). That is certain,” said a Montreal police source.
According to Quebec’s business registry, Callocchia was the owner of a numbered company, 9166-3807 Quebec Inc., involved in real estate management, and another company called Construction T.D.P.
In 1994, Callocchia was arrested along with 56 other people as part of a major RCMP drug trafficking and money laundering investigation against the Rizzuto organization. Following a lengthy trial, Callocchia was found guilty of acting as an intermediary for Vincenzo Di Maulo (brother of Joseph), who was laundering drug money through various businesses.
Callocchia received a four-year sentence but authorities then moved against him on a second case, dating to 1994, where the RCMP had evidence he tried to smuggle more than 160 kilograms of cocaine into Canada through a Toronto airport.
He pleaded guilty to drug smuggling-related charges in 1998. With everything combined, he ended up having to serve an aggregate sentence of 21 years in all.
When he appeared before the Parole Board of Canada in 2001 he was described as intelligent, well-structured and “an active member of the Italian Mafia.”
“The offences you have committed are large-scale and they required organization and planning at a level that only a highly organized group can hope to execute,” the board said. He took college-level business administration courses while serving the sentence.
When he was granted full parole in 2002 he told the board that he had no financial concerns because of an inheritance from his grandfather and the sale of a large piece of real estate that belonged to his mother.
The board believed he was now motivated “to follow the rules of society” away from a life of crime.
National Post with files from Paul Cherry, Montreal Gazette