MOB IN FLUX: Since hit on boss Pat Musitano underworld is ‘fluid’
Article content material
The brazen daytime hit on Hamilton mob chief Pat Musitano in the summertime of 2020 marked the top of an period for the underworld in Southern Ontario.
Commercial 2
Article content material
Musitano, 52, was shot to loss of life within the parking zone of a Burlington strip mall signalling {that a} three-year massacre was over. At the least a dozen mobsters, associates and relations obtained one-way tickets to the morgue through the purge.
Article content material
The rotund legal joined his youthful brother Angelo “Huge Ang” Musitano within the hereafter. Huge Ang was rubbed out within the driveway of his Waterdown dwelling Could 2, 2017.
His loss of life marked the top of the Musitano crime household that had been an underworld fixture for the reason that Nineteen Forties.
Now, two years later, conventional organized crime seems extra like huge enterprise, shifting to digital crime, putting alliances with different legal organizations and offloading homicide.
With the brand new low-profile Mafia, all the things outdated is new once more. Much less flashy John Gotti, extra low-key Carlo Gambino.
Commercial 3
Article content material
Longtime underworld watcher James Dubro has written a few of the most vital books on Canadian organized crime, together with Mob Guidelines, and was the mastermind behind the seminal CBC mob documentary Connections.
The veteran crime maven stated the mob is again to enterprise.
“Because the killing of the Musitanos, the ‘Ndrangheta cells/households in Ontario are much less excessive profile and quietly doing their drug and cash laundering and different legal companies,” Dubro instructed The Toronto Solar.
The ‘Ndrangheta stays the largest participant in gangland and there are extra cells, many with strengthened ties to Italy.
The ocean change got here when longtime Musitano ally and protector Montreal boss Vito Rizzuto died of lung most cancers in December 2013.
Commercial 4
Article content material
In accordance with ‘Ndrangheta skilled Antonio Nicaso, an writer and a professor at Queens College, the bloody battle that ensued in Montreal taught gangsters a lesson.
Homicide is unhealthy for enterprise.
“The Musitanos betrayed different native households in Hamilton and he paid the results of their actions,” Nicaso instructed The Solar, referring to Pat Musitano.
As with the Huge Apple’s lifeless Gambino chieftain John Gotti, Pat Musitano was too high-profile, relishing his function of godfather. That degree of visibility could also be good for a criminal offense boss’s ego nevertheless it attracts numerous warmth.
“The concept of preserving a low profile is at all times one of the best technique for legal teams in Canada,” Nicaso stated. “For those who hold to that technique, quiet, there are numerous authorized loopholes for you.”
Commercial 5
Article content material
Nicaso has written steadily in regards to the more and more cooperative nature in organized crime from Cape City to Caracas. Rising markets like India, Australia and China are areas the normal mob are anxious to discover.
A gram of cocaine Down Underneath retails on the road for a whopping $400 a gram.
Nicaso stated legal organizations are actually manufacturing artificial cocaine and heroin. Not precisely the identical however it should do the trick for junkies.
For the underworld, which means you don’t want the coca leaf. You want chemical compounds.
“Any basement will do,” Nicaso stated. “With the fitting chemical compounds you can also make cocaine and it has a excessive degree of toxicity and it’s extra reasonably priced.”
One in every of Nicaso’s areas of experience is the connections between worldwide crime teams. A multicultural coalition of mayhem that will carry smiles to the faces of social research college students.
Commercial 6
Article content material
He famous that El Chapo’s bloodthirsty Sinaloa cartel bought extra blow in Canada than within the U.S.
“These are macro-criminal enterprises and they’re creating a brand new underworld that strikes extra simply within the aboveworld,” he stated, including conventional organized crime has offloaded homicide to road gangs.
“It’s a fluid scenario, they’ve at all times been fast to adapt in any other case they are going to lose management of the legal matrix,” Nicaso stated
“To know the complexity of organized crime, you need to create a community of belief. They don’t need to entice the eye of the media and the police. They need to stop conflicts amongst themselves.”
James Dubro agreed however added that the Mafia doesn’t have the ability it as soon as did.
“The Mafia — Sicilian and ‘Ndrangheta — are much less influential nowadays in Ontario with numerous road gangs and bikers having a better profile,” he stated, including that new immigrant criminals are slowly supplanting the mob.
Commercial 7
Article content material
“Bikers — significantly the Hells Angels and their puppet gangs — stay robust. And naturally, there are Asian crime teams in addition to Punjabi and the Russian OC doing their legal enterprise. In the meanwhile all the things stays mainly low-keyed with the teams quietly going about their enterprise.”
“Any mob battle is over at the very least in the intervening time in Ontario,” Dubro stated. “Issues are much less secure in Quebec.”
However Nicaso stated one of many mob’s best instruments has at all times been its capacity to fabricate corruption: Be it cops, politicians, unions or enterprise leaders.
“That’s their greatest weapon,” Nicasso stated. “It’s … everlasting.”
bhunter@postmedia.com
