The Decibel - How the towing industry is linked to police corruption

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

A wide-scale investigation into police corruption in Ontario – Project South – led to the arrests of 27 people, including seven Toronto Police Services officers and one retired Toronto Police officer. The allegations range from a conspiracy to traffic Toronto Police uniforms, to selling data to members of organized crime groups, to a plot to murder a corrections officer. But one of the civilians charged in the operation had links to the tow truck industry, which has a documented history of violence and criminal connections. That led Globe and Mail reporter Molly Hayes to question what links exist between the police corruption investigation and the industry. She has reported on violence and corruption in the towing industry for years. Today, she joins the show to talk about why towing has been so prone to corruption, and its ties to a major criminal investigation. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Last month, York Regional Police announced the results of a large-scale investigation into police corruption called Project South. Detectives charged a total of 27 people, including 19 civilians, one retired Toronto police officer, and seven active Toronto police officers. The allegations include a plot to murder a corrections officer, bribery, drug trafficking, and selling data and address. to members of organized crime groups. One of the people charged was a civilian with connections to the towing industry. And that jumped out to Globe reporter Molly Hayes. Toing is a theme that has been popping up in police corruption probes for decades. Molly has spent years reporting on violence and corruption around towing and the tow truck turf wars.

Today, she'll tell us about why the industry is so prone to corruption, how it's connected. to police and what's being done about it. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin in for Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Molly. Thanks for being here. Hi, thanks for having me. So we're going to talk about Project South in a minute, but first I think we need to establish why this connection

to the tow check industry jumped out at you. What's going on behind the scenes? Sure. So my interest in the towing industry stems back to like 2018, 2019. And it started because we started noticing these odd cases that were popping up of trucks being burned in the GTA. And so initially I just started tracking these cases. And over time came to realize these were not one-offs. Like there was something going on.

This was happening with like stunning regularity. And so once I started digging in, we realized that not only were trucks being burned, but a handful of men with ties to the industry had also been killed. So it was very clear that there was like a full-fledged war going on. What did you learn through that investigation? So I learned a lot about towing, which is a thing that I, you know, we all see tow trucks. A lot of us, if you have a car, you might need a tow truck at some point. But we just don't really think about how that sector works.

But it's very lucrative. So if you use a hypothetical crash, like let's say there's a crash on the highway, a car, a car, it's going to need repairs. The driver, you know, maybe he was injured. Maybe he's going to need some physiotherapy. Might even need a personal injury lawyer. You know, while the car's being fixed, maybe they need a rental. There's all these networks of businesses around towing that stand to make money off of a single crash.

And so what I discovered is that there's a lot of businesses who are willing to pay for that business to be sent their way. And you said that tow trucks were being set on fire. What else was going on at the time? Like when these crashes happened, tow trucks are arriving. What was going on sort of at the scene of some of these crashes? I mean, the tow trucks are literally racing each other to these jobs because there's so much money to be made. We were seeing lots of cases of erratic driving of these tow trucks just like gawning it down the shoulder of the highway. We were seeing fist fights at scenes and we were seeing shooting.

of trucks shooting at each other. How much of what was going on with the tow truck turf wars was connected to organized crime? So I think that the turf wars were really emblematic of the infiltration of organized crime in this industry. So, you know, there are a lot of good people who work in the tow truck industry. There's a lot of small family businesses. But there's also, over time, been a real growing presence of organized crime in the industry. And so what we were seeing playing out was those criminal factions fighting each other for turf. We were seeing the bad actors at play.

What is it about the towing industry? You know, you said there's a lot of money to be made in it, but what is it about the towing industry that can make it so ripe for connections to organize crime? I mean, a big part of it is the money. There's the potential for fraud. There's a lot of money at stake. But there's also just some tangible appeals of driving a tow truck. And the main thing is that it's a good way to move things. So if you are a drug dealer, you can stash some drugs in the car you're towing.

And that gives you plausible liability if you were to be pulled over. It's also a good way to move stolen cars. You know, a Lamborghini being pulled on a tow truck in broad daylight isn't necessarily going to set off any alarm bells because people will just assume it broke down. What kind of fraud do we see with towing? The fraud we're seeing in connection to towing is staged collisions, exaggerated body shop invoices, maybe a physio bill to the insurance company that nobody ever actually needed. That's some of the potential for fraud. And then in addition to that, we are seeing kickbacks. Right.

This was like the physio clinic or body shop, you know, paying a tow truck driver to bring the customers their way, right? Exactly. The physio clinics, the body shops, the rental car companies, the personal injury lawyers. There's a whole network who are who want that business and they're willing to pay the tow trucks to send them that business. And in some cases, the police. So you mentioned police potentially getting involved here. we know about how police might get involved here? So in many ways, police are at the core of it. And I actually talked to this former acting district attorney from Brooklyn and Queens who handled an

NYPD case a few years back. And the way he put it was that police are central to completing these crimes. So, you know, I mentioned all these businesses that are willing to pay kickbacks to tow trucks to send them their business. Well, it's police who often have control over which tow truck is going to get that car in the first place. And so those kickbacks in some cases can extend all the way back to police. Can you tell me about one of the cases this former acting attorney general was involved with? Yeah. So in his case, the police officers who were ultimately charged and convicted were circumventing the city's rotation lists. They had a system where there were approved towing companies that would be called in after a crash. And they were

going around that and just basically calling their buddy to give him a leg up. And it also interestingly went even beyond that. They were pulling information from their confidential police databases and then selling it to their contacts, knowing that it would be sold further in order for these businesses to solicit business. So that was what was going on in the States. What did we see happening in Canada in Ontario? So going back to, let's say, 2020.

So we published a story in early 2020, sort of exposing what was being called the tow truck turf force in the GTA. And, you know, at that point, I think it was 50 trucks that had been burned and a handful of people had been killed. Wow. That number quickly doubled in terms of the arsons. But this immediately led to police investigations, almost every police force in the GTA. was running a project to tackle this violence and corruption in the industry. We saw dozens of people end up charged in these projects, and among them are 10 police officers in Ontario. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what they were charged with when it ended up happening there?

Yeah, so we had a Toronto police officer, six OPP officers, and three Ottawa police officers. And the sort of overarching theme was, again, allegedly, you know, showing favoritism to specific companies in the towing industry. Ultimately, the vast majority of those cases fell apart. The charges were largely stayed due to court delays around that time. Some of them were withdrawn in exchange for resignations. But the cases ultimately fell apart. How long has this been going on? the turf wars and then this connection that we've seen to police officers.

So one of the things that really jumped out at me when I was researching is I came across this case in Toronto from 2001 and there are just such glaring familiar details. So it was a case where an auto theft ring had been busted and among the people charged included a Toronto police constable and a tow truck driver and a body shop owner. and the suggestion was that the police officer was pulling information for his friends, the tow truck driver, and the body shop to assist them in this crime syndicate basically that was stealing and then selling cars. So, you know, this is another thing that Mark Lesko, the former acting DA in New York mentioned, these types of relationships, these schemes, these are like time honored. This is cultural. This is something that we have seen for a really long time and also in a lot of places.

Like, you know, when I was looking back recently, there are a number of big cities in the U.S. who have dealt with towing related police corruption cases. So Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Miami. And then, you know, again, in Ontario, we had Ottawa, Toronto. And then most recently, Toronto again. We'll be right back. Okay, so we saw a connection between a police officer and the towing industry all the way back in 2001. There was that case from 2020 you were telling me about.

And now we're seeing this connection in Project South now. Project South was about police corruption around drug trafficking, access and supplying private information from police databases. How is the towing industry getting mixed up in this as well? Yeah, so this was something that immediately jent out to me and I think other reporters who have covered the violence and corruption in the towing industry. one of the civilians charged alongside the officers did police confirm have direct affiliations to the towing industry. Can you tell me a little bit about this person, what we know? Yeah, so the guy charged with the towing connection. His name is Elwyn Satanowski.

There's a lot of questions still at this stage about all of the players. But what we do know about Alwyn Satanowski is that he did hold a towing license in the city of Toronto previously. and we know from the city that subsequent applications for licenses were denied. So what was he charged with in Project South? How was he wrapped up there? So Elwyn Saitanowski is facing 12 charges as part of Project South. So among those is for allegedly arranging and or being party to shootings at three different homes last fall. At least one of those was linked to a former towing kingpin. we know. And then another charge that really jumped out is for unlawful, indirect use of a Toronto police

computer. And at the press conference, Alan Savinovsky is one of four people that police pointed to as having allegedly sought confidential information from police that was then used to commit crimes. So, you know, there's a lot of questions still at this stage about what the exact relationship was and and all that. But what we do know is that once again, there's this link. There's a tow truck related party who is getting confidential information

from police allegedly to commit crime. Molly, you've been reporting on crime in the towing industry for a long time. Has it gotten any better? So the violence has ebbed and flowed. Again, like almost every police force in the GTA has had a project to target this violence. in corruption. But like anything in organized crime, the violence swells back up. There's always

going to be new factions, new players. But government has cracked down. That's one big change we've seen since 2020. They made some big legislative changes to help, but they've definitely not solved the problem. This is the Ontario government. It's the Ontario government. Yeah. So there are two big things sort of worth pointing out. So the first one they did is towing operators are now licensed at a provincial level. Previously, it was a real patchwork municipal system. That was something that the towing associations had actually long been calling for. It didn't make sense to have this patchwork system.

We should have the same rules for everybody. One sort of overarching regulation system. So, you know, on the one hand, it's great. They're happy they've been calling this for a long time. But the rules are quite cumbersome. there's a lot of tests, there's criminal record checks, there's mandatory training, there's fees. So, you know, when I was talking to the Professional Toeing Association of Ontario, they sort of say the pendulum's almost swung a bit too far. And a lot of the good guys in the industry are being pushed out along with the bad actors.

The rules seem like maybe they're cumbersome for people trying to get into the towing industry. Are they working in cracking down on the violence? So it's definitely weeded out bad actors. Not all of them, clearly. We're still seeing trucks burned. This is, I think, going to be a long road. But another thing that's helped significantly is they've implemented what they call towing zones on the highways. So you might see, I actually noticed a sign on my way and today on the highway that said authorized towing zone.

And so that means that in these specific chunks of highways, there are approved companies. who can work there and nobody else can. So they've eliminated this real problem segment of the industry that's known as chasing. And that's specifically what we talked about earlier, these guys who are racing after a crash to get to the scene and win that job. So, you know, that's really helped to eliminate that from the highways. But experts say in some ways it's kind of just pushed those problems into the cities where you know, on paper, it also shouldn't be happening. But in practice, it is because there's

no one keeping an eye. Like, police don't attend every fender bender. And the general public does not know the rules. You know, there's a rule now that tow trucks in Ontario cannot solicit business after a crash. They can't be within 200 meters of a crash site and less called, but the general public doesn't know that. If you get in a crash and you're in a panic, maybe you're injured, there's cars honking at you, you know, you're not going to pick up your phone and call three different towing companies for a quote. You are going to go with the first guy there or the guy that the police tell you to call. And so the professional towing association of Ontario said, you know, as long as you still have this chasing model, even just in practice,

then the violence and corruption is still going to exist. Molly, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. That was Molly Hayes, a reporter for the globe. That's it for today. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin. The Decibel is hosted by Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and me.

Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you.