Nicolo Rizzuto

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nicolo Rizzuto (Cattolica Eraclea, Sicily, February 18, 1924) is a member of the Mafia. He is also known as Nick Rizzuto. He immigrated to Canada 1954 and the family settled in Montreal. Nick's son Vito Rizzuto is allegedly the godfather of Cosa Nostra in Canada and is currently serving a federal sentenced for homicide in the United States.

Rizzuto began his Mafia career in Canada as an associate of the Cotroni crime family that controlled much of Montreal's drug trade in the 1970s while answering to the Bonanno crime family of New York. He was, however, more closely linked to the Sicilian Mafia, in particular the Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia family, who came from the same region in the province of Agrigento.^[1]

Nick Rizzuto has ties to organized crime in Canada, the United States, Venezuela and Italy. Rizzuto allegedly participated in the murder in 1978 of Paolo Violi,^[2] a Bonanno underboss who had been named boss of Montreal's family. He allegedly replaced the late Vic Cotroni^[3] as the clearinghouse for Corsican heroin entering Canada and the United States.

Rizzuto did not care much about the formal and ceremonial command lines in the Cotroni family, who were of Calabrian origin. Violi complained about the independent modus operandi of his Sicilian 'underlings', Nick Rizzuto in particular. "He is going from one side to the other, here and there, and he says nothing to nobody, he is doing business and nobody knows anything," Violi said about Rizzuto. Violi asked for more 'soldiers' from his Bonanno bosses, clearly preparing for war, and Violi's boss at the time, Vincent Cotroni remarked: "After all, I am 'capo decina', I have the right to expel him."^[1]

By the 1980s, the Rizzutos emerged as the city's pre-eminent Mafia crew after a turf war between the Montreal family's Sicilian and Calabrian factions.

Nick Rizzuto was arrested on November 23, 2006.^[4] Before the arrest, Rizzuto appeared to be immune to police investigations in Canada. But he did serve five years in prison in Venezuela between 1988 and 1993 after being convicted of cocaine possession. An undercover Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer was later informed that Rizzuto was paroled early after an associate of the family delivered an CND$800,000 bribe to Venezuelan officials.^[4]