Almost all of the more than 500 people who filed into Madonna Della Difesa church in Little Italy on Nov. 10, 2010, had little, if anything, to say.
Most wore sombre faces as they filed in to pay their respects to Nicola (Zio Cola) Rizzuto, the man who orchestrated a takeover of the Mafia in Montreal during the late 1970s and maintained that control for decades. Rizzuto, 86, had been murdered in his home the week before and his violent death marked the end of an era that almost none of the mourners wanted to talk about that day.
But at least one man appeared eager to express his feelings about what Rizzuto’s death meant to him. A lot had been said and written about Rizzuto in the days before his funeral and it appeared that Alberto Pizzi’s goal was to counter some of the negativity.
“For me, he wasn’t a criminal,” Pizzi, now 83, (who was recently charged at the Montreal courthouse with extortion and three counts of uttering threats) told a small group of reporters standing outside the church. He referred to himself as an accountant who had known Rizzuto for decades. “He was normal. We knew each other, we respected each other.”
Pizzi’s comments were published by a few national outlets across Canada in the hours that followed.
What Pizzi did not mention that day is that his son, Marco, now 46, was closely linked to the very organization Rizzuto helped run along with his now-deceased son Vito.
In 2005, Marco Pizzi held enough sway within the Rizzuto organization that he could walk into the Consenza Social Club, the organization’s former headquarters in St-Léonard and hold a meeting with its top leaders. The RCMP had cameras and microphones hidden inside the café as part of Project Colisée when, on Dec. 13, 2005, Pizzi had a long conversation with Francesco Del Balso, 46, and Rocco Sollecito, 67, two men who, to this day, are alleged to be leaders within the Mafia in Montreal.
Magdi Samaan, a financier who lived next door to Pizzi’s home on Gouin Blvd. E., had attempted to commit suicide earlier that month and Del Balso was making efforts to collect $50,000 from Samaan for someone he knew. As they talked, Del Balso referred to Samaan as “a scammer” and therefore someone they should collect from as soon as possible. Pizzi disagreed and suggested they invest more money with him.
“You guys know he’s a genius,” Pizzi said at one point, noting Samaan had a PhD in finance. “There’s money to make with him.”
Pizzi might have gained a little insight into investing after his family won the Lotto 6/49 jackpot — a little more than $1 million — in October 1986. His father Alberto, the accountant, was featured in a photo holding his winnings, in a Loto-Québec newsletter dated Oct. 19, 1986.
In the days that followed the meeting at Consenza, a series of telephone conversations between Del Balso and Pizzi, secretly recorded by the RCMP, revealed Del Balso was trying to collect even more money from Samaan on behalf of several other people. On Christmas Day that same year, Del Balso was informed that Samaan’s body had been found in a hotel room in Longueuil. He had apparently taken his own life.
In November 2006, Nicolo Rizzuto, Del Balso, Sollecito and more than 60 other people were arrested in Project Colisée, but the lengthy investigation uncovered no wrongdoing by Pizzi who was not arrested. In the years that followed Colisée proved to be a major blow to the Rizzuto organization. Its leadership has changed significantly in the past decade and, in recent years, police sources have alleged Pizzi is an important player within the organization.
He is part of a group of eight men scheduled to have a bail hearing, beginning on Tuesday at the Gouin courthouse, that is expected to last two weeks. The eight men are among 15 who were arrested on May 11 in the third and final part of Project Clemenza, a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation into Mafia-tied networks that evolved in the wake of Colisée.
On one of four indictments filed at the Montreal courthouse on May 11, Pizzi faces two charges alleging he trafficked in cocaine and conspired to do the same, between Sept. 28, 2011 and Oct. 6, 2011, along with Liborio Cuntrera, 47, one of six men alleged to have assumed the leadership of the Rizzuto organization after Vito Rizzuto died of natural causes in December 2013. In another indictment filed in Project Clemenza, Pizzi is charged with four counts including one that alleges he was part of a conspiracy, along with 25 other people, to smuggle cocaine into Canada from several locations in the United States and from Mexico in 2011. Two of the men referred to in the same charge — Tonino Callochia and Giuseppe (Closure) Colapelle — have since been murdered. According to the Journal de Montréal, Pizzi was with Callochia when he was shot inside a restaurant in Rivière-des-Prairies on Dec. 1, 2014.
Following his arrest earlier this month, Pizzi appeared before a Quebec Court judge, via a video linkup with a police station. The courtroom was packed with lawyers and when Pizzi appeared on a large television screen his attorney, Franco Schiro, asked if the Crown objected to his client’s release.
“There is indeed an objection,” replied prosecutor Marc Cigana with a heavy emphasis on the word ‘indeed’. And just 12 days earlier, a Montreal police detective mentioned Pizzi’s name and his alleged ties to the Mafia during a hearing before the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux. The Montreal police were seeking to have a bar’s license temporarily revoked because they feared more violence would follow after a street gang member was almost killed after he walked out of the establishment. As part of their argument, Montreal police wanted the liquor board to be aware of the well-known criminals who had been seen inside the bar in recent years and saw fit to include Pizzi on that list. But his criminal record does not reflect that of a man alleged to be an important player within the Mafia in Montreal.
In 1992, Pizzi pleaded guilty, in St-Jérôme, to causing a disturbance in or near a public place and was given the choice of either spending three days in jail or having to pay a $150 fine. His only other criminal conviction, according to provincial records, involves a conviction in 1990 for public mischief.
On July 3, 2013, Pizzi and a numbered company he owns, which deals in recycling used car parts, were ordered to pay more than $136,000 in fines after having pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining tax reimbursements. One of Pizzi’s partners in the same company, Michel Gingras, 51, was among 19 people arrested in 2010 in Project Impact, a Montreal police crackdown on drug trafficking in Italian cafés with the goal of putting an end to a series of 18 fires that had been set in the same type of cafés in eastern Montreal. Gingras was not charged with anything related to the arson fires but was charged with possessing cocaine with the intent to traffic. He has since had the outcome of that case removed from public records, but he was later charged with having violated the conditions of whatever sentence he received for possessing cocaine when the Montreal police carried out raids in Project Impact.
The other seven men who are scheduled to be part of the same bail hearing are: Franco Albanese, 49, of St-Léonard, Hansley Lee Joseph, 36, of the St-Laurent borough, Erasmo Crivello, 36, of Laval, Frank Iaconetti, 48, of St-Léonard, Antonio Ciavaglia, 56, of Kirkland, Carmelo Marsala, 37, of Anjou, and Riccardo Preteroti, 48.
