The Cotroni


 




The Cotroni crime family is a Mafia organization based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The territory controlled by the family once covered most of southern Quebec and Ontario, until the Rizzuto family supplanted them.[1] The FBI considers the family a branch of the Bonanno crime family;[1] however, Canadian law enforcement considers it a separate criminal organization.[citation needed]




Leaders of the Cotroni family included Vic Cotroni and Paolo Violi. The organization led by the Sicilian Nicolo Rizzuto eclipsed the Controni family in the late 1970s


 


 




The family was created by Vic Cotroni in the 1940s and by the 1950s the family evolved into an important branch of the Bonanno crime family and was involved in the French Connection. The family has kept ties with Mafia families in Italy and throughout the US and Canada. A internal war broke out between Sicilian and Calabrian factions in the 1970s.[4] This led to a violent mafia war in Montreal leading to the deaths of Paolo Violi (who was acting capo for Vic Cotroni) and others in the late 1970s. The war ended when Vic Cotroni the Calabrian leader had to let go the Sicilian faction led by Nicolo Rizzuto.




The Calabrian faction continued to operate after the late 1970s with Vic Cotroni as the boss until he died leaving his youngest brother Frank Cotroni as the boss.[5] The faction would lose more power in Quebec and operated in the shadow of the Sicilian faction led by Nicolo Rizzuto. Their leader Frank Cotroni died of cancer in August 2004 leaving the Rizzuto Sicilian faction as the most powerful crime family in Canada.


 




Paolo Violi (1933[1] âââ‰â¬Å January 22, 1978) was an Italian-Canadian mobster and underboss of the Bonanno crime family's faction in Montreal, the Cotroni crime family. The Violi and Cotroni families were from Calabria while the Rizzuto crime family, like the Bonannos, were from Sicily. This led to tension between Nicolo Rizzuto, an associate of Cotroni in Montreal, and the Violis, who were vying for control of the city's Mafia controlled drug market.[2]




Violi mistakenly allowed his house to be bugged by the Quebec Provincial Police. In retaliation, the Bonanno family sanctioned his assassination in Montreal.[citation needed]




A mob war in Montreal began with the murder of Pietro Sciara on Valentine's Day in 1976. Sciara was considered to be then mob boss Paolo Violi's consigliere and his body was left in the street after seeing the movie The Godfather II with his wife. On Feb. 8, 1977, two men murdered Francesco Violi, the younger brother of Paolo, in the family business. The family enforcer, his body was mutilated by several shotgun and pistol wounds. Paolo Violi was shot in the head at close range with a shotgun on January 22, 1978, in his cafe. The war ended on Oct. 17, 1980, when Rocco Violi, the last of the Violi brothers, was seated, for a family meal, at his kitchen table in his Montreal home when a single bullet from a sniper's rifle struck him dead. The Rizzuto organization subsequently took over Montreal.

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