Front Burner - A veteran mob reporter on organized crime in Canada today

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Last week, a gunman in a white SUV pulled up to a restaurant on a busy Toronto street in broad daylight and shot the restaurant's owner dead. Police are saying the fatal shooting was targeted. And according to the Toronto Star's crime reporter, the victim may have had links to the mob. Today on Front Burner, Peter Edwards shares his thoughts on the brazen drive-by shooting, the connection to another shocking death from 2012, and the state of organized crime in Canada today.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. I live in the west end of Toronto, near High Park. I really love my neighbourhood. There are lots of young families and small businesses.

So I was rattled when I learned that last Friday there was a shooting on a nearby busy street called Roncesvalles in broad daylight, right in front of a popular restaurant. A man died. Witnesses said the gunman dropped his weapon on the sidewalk and then took off in a white Mercedes SUV. For their part, the police will only say that the shooting was targeted. But my former colleague at the Toronto Star, Peter Edwards, well, he has a lot more information, according to his sources, including the fact that the victim was an associate of a former Montreal mob boss. There is no other journalist in Canada as plugged into this stuff as Peter.

He wrote a book that inspired an entire Netflix series on the mob. Today, Peter and I are going to talk about this latest brazen shooting, but also how organized crime in Canada is transforming with the times. Spoiler alert, it involves millennials. This is Frontburner. Peter, hello. Hi, great to be here. So, as I mentioned, there was this shooting in the West End of Toronto this weekend.

A man named Paolo Caputo was shot and killed outside the restaurant that he owned. And what do we know so far about this brazen shooting? This weekend, a man named Paolo Caputo was shot and killed outside the restaurant that he owned. And what do we know so far about this brazen shooting? It was clearly, it's hard to see how it wasn't targeted. Police say it was targeted. They seem to know who they were after. There was a waiting vehicle. The gun was dropped, two shots at least, and he was dead at the scene. It appears a bullet was still in the chamber. This longtime Ronsonsville resident is shocked that a shooting took place so close to her home. We have to wake up to gun

violence and I think we have to recognize that it affects entire neighbourhoods. Like everyone in this neighbourhood is shaken. He's got a younger brother. His younger brother's in prison for first degree murder. You and I actually covered the case, that murder, seven years ago at the Star. We did. I was such a green reporter at the time. This was another very brazen shooting on a packed patio in Little Italy. In just a matter of seconds, the Euro Cup euphoria in Little Italy turned serious. Police say the 35-year-old Toronto man shot and killed was targeted. It happened at the Eaton Centre. It happens here.

People are watching, enjoying a game, and all of a sudden, some madman comes in. Yeah, and that was a wild one because it brought in Montreal, it brought in Vancouver, it brought in all of Canada, really. There's a group called the Wolfpack Alliance, and that was connected to it. This guy's younger brother was part of what's believed to be a big drug ripoff, and it's believed that a cartel wasn't paid for their drugs and that they're very upset. And then so why was this gentleman killed on the weekend? Because they couldn't catch the other ones, and because they want to make a point.

If they're not going to be paid, they want people to know that there's a price in not being paid. They don't have a whole bunch of people in the country for a presence. And so they want to be able to assert themselves and keep people in line. It's sort of funny because with organized crime now, it's not as structured as it used to be. And so there are a lot of millennials running around trying to jump the line. Oh, I definitely want to get to the millennial organized crime in a second. But first, how do you know all of this? Just different sources who don't know each other, who don't really get along. And then some court records that tie things together, people mentioning facts that they wouldn't know if they weren't insiders and sort of long-term sources.

Some of them are, a lot of times in crime, there's a betrayal. And so someone who's in the criminal world, their side will have been betrayed, and maybe on a personal level, and they're very upset. And so they'll sometimes talk to someone like me because they want to get their side out. And I should say the CBC has not been able to confirm your sources, although I have worked with you before at the Toronto Star, and you have some crazy sources, my friend, I will say.

Yeah, it's funny because you don't know when they're going to pop up, but there are a lot of kind of personal connections. And sometimes I just tell people, don't tell me something if you don't want to see it in print. Like, don't write a check that I can't cash and I'm not your priest. But if you want to talk, let's talk. I know that some of your sources are actually in this world, in this underworld. Why are they talking to you, Peter? Because it's like everybody sees 10 or 15% of the animal,

and they wonder what else is going on, and they're jumpy. Sometimes people want to talk to you, and they can't talk in their own group, and they don't want to hire or shrink. It's sort of odd. Sometimes, too, at a trial, I can think of once where a woman was crying and I saw her in the parking lot and we just had a long talk. And now we get along. Back to these shootings for a second. So your sources are telling you that this man who was shot outside the restaurant in Roncesvalles,

he has a brother who's in jail for another murder, the one that we covered in 2012. That brother may have owed an enormous amount of debt to a drug cartel. You also found, though, that there is a connection between the man killed on the weekend and Montreal mob boss, Vito Rizzuto, right? He was called the Teflon Don, but his luck ran out in 2003 when he was arrested and eventually extradited to the United States. Yes, and Vito Rizzuto died in December 2013. He still has some of his organization around. When he'd come to Toronto, he'd go to a restaurant that the guy who was killed on Friday used to run. Also, the guy who was killed gambled a lot. He played a lot of poker, and some of that money would go to Vito Rizzuto.

Like a very high-stakes poker game? Yeah. It was supposed to be like a million a year, like big money, locked doors, they have to buzz you in, that sort of thing. And there are court records pointing to this stuff. It isn't just what people are whispering. So he did have the connection, but he wasn't, this wasn't Michael Corleone. This wasn't Al Capone. This was a guy who, this was just the environment he was in. He wasn't some evil, terrible guy. He was a grandfather, a father of two daughters.

Right. The man who was shot over the weekend, what you're hearing from your sources is that this isn't like a big leader of any group. He was comfortable around a lot of people, but he wasn't a big mob boss. OK. But Vito Rizzuto, who he had some connections with sort of tangentially, is, of course, a big mob boss. He was a conciliator who brought together Sicilians and Calabrians who had been at war. He reconciled rival bikers and street gangs and mediated disputes between construction bosses. Remind me who he is.

Vito Rizzuto was huge. He was the last undisputed top mob person in the country, top organized crime person in the country. Now, if you ask people to make a list, they'd have trouble and they'd come up with different names. There's a pyramid and here's at the top. Crime reporter Andre Cedillo says Vito Rizzuto wove the mafia into the fabric of the city.

The mafia is infiltrated everywhere in the legitimate economy in Montreal. That's the problem. That's the gift of Vito Rizzuto. So big takeaway here. What do all these connections between the shooting this weekend, the shooting in 2012 in Little Italy, the mob connection, what do they say to you about this latest shooting? You can't erase history. You know that something can be seven years old and it can still come back and bite you. Peter, that

feels terrifying to me. It is terrifying. I mean, there are people, there are a lot of people who, if they got shot, I wouldn't be surprised at all. And this morning I actually thought that one of them had been shot. And so you go through your little Rolodex of who it could have been. And there are a lot of people who think they have reasons to shoot other people. There's still a lot that we don't know about this shooting, although your sources are telling you a ton of stuff. And we don't yet know exactly who's responsible. There haven't been any arrests yet.

As police canvass the area, they're also looking for the man seen getting into the vehicle. He's described as being around six feet tall with a light complexion and a skinny build. I was hoping we could move away from this particular case a little bit and look more generally at the state of the mob in Canada. So my reference points, beyond talking to you, are the Godfather.

Or they should hang himself in his jail cell. Or be struck by a bolt of lightning. And I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. And the Sopranos. You ever go whining to the big man again about s*** between you and me, we'll have a problem, my friend. And these crazy broad daylight shootings kind of reinforce those dramatic notions to me. But this is your beat.

How would you describe the mob in Canada? Does it look anything like we see on TV? To be honest, it does. And part of it's because some of these guys grew up watching this stuff. on TV? To be honest, it does. And part of it's because some of these guys grew up watching the stuff. Some of it's because people like me, Moonlight, four shows, trying to make things more authentic. The idea of when she'd get out. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. That would have been written, even if Mario Puzo hadn't written it, someone else would have. I mean, that's just the way it is. And what are they up to?

Like, who are the big players here? People are trying to get rich basically selling drugs and also gambling. I mean, those are the big ones. And you can't point at any one ethnic group. You can't even point at any economic group. And define mob for me. Like, how would you define the word mob? See, I see it just as a structured, organized crime group of, say, more than three people, but something that's just trying to ongoing make an income out of illegal things. And does it work like the way that we see it on TV with this hierarchy? you know, it all goes up to this boss.

That's really, really changing. That's a great question. Because if you'd asked me that 10 years ago, I would have said yes, definitely. And I could have pointed at bosses now. In the Vito Rizzuto years, before he died. Yeah, definitely. And before Vito, there were other bosses. Now, not really. And now if you're the boss, you could get shot. So you really don't even want to be identified as the boss. Why is it changing so much? Why is it different now than it was? I think some of it is the millennial thing.

I think some of it is the get rich quick thing. I think now with the Internet and with encrypted messages, I can set up a deal in Mexico and have a huge load coming in here and go around all of these long established groups and make big money quickly. You can kind of take shortcuts. Unpack the millennial thing for me. I feel like everyone's always blaming my generation for everything, including apparently changing the mob. Yeah, it's funny because even in crime things, you have the same kind of whining about millennials.

Maybe it's been that way forever. But it used to be where you'd get pulled up slowly and you'd get given things and you'd be brought along and it'd be almost like a corporation. Now you can jump the line. Now with the internet and now the old guys aren't so good on the internet and the young guys are. So the criticism of millennials and the mob are the exact same criticisms of millennials

everywhere that we feel entitled and we don't want to wait for anything and we don't respect authority? Yeah, just throw in a gun and you've pretty much got it. For what we're seeing about millennials, they're a lot less racist than the old ones used to be. So a plus is that they're less racist, so they're more inclined to work with other groups. But it also means it expands your scope. If you want to be a criminal, now you can spin the globe and look anywhere you want. You know, I should say this is fun to talk about because we're talking about movies and TV shows, but we are talking about violence here, public killings. What do you think the effect of all of this has on people like you and me? It's jarring. And I think when you ask why people call me, sometimes

they're just really shook and they need to talk to someone and they need to talk to someone who isn't going to interrupt them and someone who isn't going to burn them. And so they, you know, someone they liked, someone they thought was a decent guy, you know, a grandfather who was making coffee for people, all of a sudden he's dead. And why is everybody crying? Right. I mean, there's going to be a funeral service in the next couple of days. And a lot of nice people will be crying because someone decided to do this to this guy. You mentioned this man has two daughters.

Yeah, and grandkids. I mean, I haven't heard one story about him being cruel. one story about him being cruel. The problem with him is that he was around people who brought danger to him and for him to be safe he would have had to step away from people that he loved. Is there any way to quantify the number of deaths associated with the mob in Canada? In Toronto every year there's about 30 organized crime murders and then it depends how you define mob. Montreal would be a

bit less, Vancouver would be a bit less. Some places like Chilliwack or Abbotsford are actually quite high. And this is how, as we talked about before, how you define the mob. Yeah, I mean, there is a real actual, there are different strains of mafia where you could talk about Andrangheta and Sicilian mafia, and there's that, but there are also here a lot of groups that work together, and so it's not as sort of prissy where you can just draw a line between them. organized crime, that type of, when you get to Canada, there's a lot more crossover. And when people go to prison, they end up making more contacts again. A lot of times when someone goes to prison, they'll either get out of it, like it'll hurt their marriage, it'll hurt them, they'll decide I can't take it, or they'll get way, way better networked and they'll come out smarter and they'll come out with different groups that they never had before. I know of one

organized criminal in prison who has a huge deal to play chess with him. And if you're seen playing chess with this guy, you were somebody. What about the impact that all of this activity has on the economy? It's a real thing. I mean, there's some areas if you want to be involved in real estate and development, it's a reality. But is it hurting the economy? I think so. And I think it's hurting entry into the economy.

I think where it's hurting people is that if you're trying to get in and you're trying to play everything straight, you're competing against people who aren't going by the rules. Given everything that we just talked about, what's the scope of organized crime in Canada? Is it declined? Is it rising? I think it's on the way up. And I think it's, there's a fair bit of investment so that there's, you know, real obvious organized crime, human trafficking, cocaine trafficking, that sort of thing. But then there's real estate, I can think of a person in banking who got pinched recently, there's that sort of

thing where you're funneling money into the mainstream economy. And if you wanted to set up a cafe in some neighborhoods, you'd have a real problem. We've talked about some of your sources in this world. You've written 10 books now on organized crime. So there's no doubt that you have a lot of crazy stories. I imagine sometimes it does get pretty scary, though. I wonder if there was ever a moment that you thought, I can't do this anymore. There are moments where you think, what am I doing? Like there are moments where you think, how many choices did I make to end up here?

It's sort of odd because I was an entertainment reporter and I was a sports reporter and I would have been happy staying in those. So I didn't aim for this. But on the other hand, it is fascinating and I really do wonder what's going to happen next. And you see a lot about human nature. I mean, you really, really see what people are like under stress, and you can see a huge crime, and then you can see the effect it has on a marriage, the effect it has on someone's daughter, the effect it has on all these sort of ripple things, and so that's fascinating.

When I started off, when I was in sports and entertainment, I didn't like criticizing people who weren't good at what they were trying to do. I remember a really clumsy little girl who was a gymnast and I didn't want to make fun of her, but I didn't want to encourage her because she just wasn't very good. So I didn't know how to describe her. When I'm writing about someone who's done some of these things, they don't expect you to say nice things. Like you'll say he's a killer and he'll say, you know, you talk to the guy. Yeah, that was an accurate point. Okay, give me the craziest story you've got. I've got some odd stuff now where I've written about fathers who were in the Satan's Choice or the Hell's Angels

like for biker gangs and then I can think of two daughters who became ministers because I think that's part of their rebellion against their fathers. Oh, so they did the thing the farthest away from where they came from. Yeah. And they'll say that what their dad did led them to what they're doing. Like they're on the pulpit because dad was a hell's angel. I talked to another guy too, a Mexican journalist that I get along with really well. He was pulled over once in Ciudad Juarez and they were trying to decide whether or not to kill him. And he could hear a guy on the cell phone, and it was a former cop who is now with the cartel. And the big

argument was that the guy who was thinking of killing him just wanted to go home, and it was the end of his shift sort of thing. And so it was like, just let me know, do I do it or don't I? I don't want to wait here all night. That is wild. And so he's listening to this argument about whether or not he dies. And the person who's going to kill him is just upset because he wants to get home and watch TV. Peter, that's nuts. Yeah, it really is. And I mean, he's a very, very nice, decent guy. And it's odd to think that every time you talk to him,

it's because some stranger at the end of the phone decided, I'll let him go. Well, on that note, thank you for coming by. Thank you. So some other news, particularly for those who have been following the Jeffrey Epstein saga in the U.S. We did an episode on his suicide and the volume of allegations against him a week ago. You can find that in our feed. Well, yesterday, three women launched a lawsuit against his estate. This brings the total number of women suing him since his death to at least five.

It also came to light this week, though, that just two days before his suicide, Epstein placed his estimated $578 million in assets in a trust, something that experts say could really complicate things for the women because of the lack of transparency around trust. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.