Founded | 1950s |
---|---|
Founded by | Vincenzo Cotroni |
Founding location | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
Years active | 1950s–? |
Territory | Montreal |
Ethnicity | People of Italian descent as "made men", and other ethnicities as "associates" |
Criminal activities | Racketeering, drug trafficking, murder, illegal gambling, corruption, extortion, theft, loan sharking, fraud |
Allies | Bonanno crime family |
Rivals | Rizzuto crime family |
The Cotroni crime family (Italian: [koˈtroːni]) is an organized crime family based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Cotroni family was historically controlled by mobsters of Calabrian ancestry. The territory controlled by the family once covered most of southern Quebec and Ontario, until the Rizzuto crime family supplanted them.[1] The FBI considered the family a branch of the Bonanno crime family.[1]
In the 1950s the family formed a strong connection to the New York Bonanno crime family as the crime family began controlling the majority of Montreal's drug trade.[2] The Cotroni family also kept ties with other Mafia families in Italy and throughout the US and Canada. In the 1970s an internal power struggle war broke out between Sicilian and Calabrian factions in the family, notably aspiring Sicilian mob boss Nicolo Rizzuto.[3][2][4] During the violent Mafia war in Montreal Paolo Violi (who was acting capo for Vic Cotroni) and his brothers were murdered along with others through the mid 1970s to the early 1980s until the war ceased.[2][5][6]
The Calabrian faction continued to operate after the early 1980s with Vic Cotroni as the boss until he died, of cancer, in 1984, leaving his youngest brother Frank Cotroni as the boss.[7] Frank Cotroni developed connections with French-Canadian Réal Simard, who became his driver and hitman. In 1986, Simard turned informant after his arrest, confessing to five murders and involvement with Cotroni. Cotroni was sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter in 1987.[8] Frank Cotroni died, of cancer, in August 2004, leaving the Rizzuto Sicilian faction as the most powerful crime family in Canada.[9]
On November 4, 2012 Joe Di Maulo, a longtime ally of the Cotroni family, was murdered outside his Montreal home.[10] Police believe his murder is part of an ongoing power struggle between the Sicilians and their rivals.[11]