Luppino crime family

Giacomo Luppino was born in 1900 in the village of Oppido Mamertina, Calabria, Italy. Already involved in organized crime in Calabria, and their 10 children immigrated to Hamilton, in 1956, from Castellace, a subdivision of Oppido Mamertina. Luppino was said to carry a human ear in his wallet. Luppino was the prime suspect in two murders in Italy, though he was never charged in either case. The human ear that Luppino was believed to always have with him is said to have been from an incident when he severed an ear from a man in public to demonstrate his power. By the time Luppino arrived in Canada, the "Three Dons" had already been established, consisting of Santo Scibetta, Anthony Sylvestro and Calogero Bordonaro, who answered to Stefano Magaddino of the Buffalo crime family. Magaddino's syndicate supplied drugs to Hamilton and Guelph, which in turn supplied drugs to Toronto. Before Scibetta moved to Hamilton, he was already a made member of the Magaddino family. By the early 1960s, Magaddino promoted Santo Scibetta to leader of the Buffalo family's Ontario branch replacing Johnny Papalia who was under indictments in the United States. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Luppino and Scibetta jointly controlled Hamilton. In the early 1960s, Luppino was the capodecina of the Hamilton faction of Magaddino's Buffalo crime family, giving Luppino control over all of his branches in Ontario. Luppino had been seen meeting with powerful mob figures, including 'Ndrangheta member Rocco Zito and Siderno Group member Michele Racco. Luppino and Santo Scibetta also answered to Magaddino while Papalia was imprisoned in Canadian and American prisons between 1962 and 1968. Giacomo had five sons who were involved in organized crime: Vincenzo (Jimmy), Natale (Nat), Rocco, Antonio (Tony) and John Luppino. In the early 1970s, Natale Luppino worked with Volpe on extortion schemes where they would be paid kickbacks from both the union and the developers for negotiating construction contracts, namely from construction company owner Cesido Romanelli. Giacomo Luppino along with his son Jimmy Luppino and Harold Bordonaro, later sponsored Paul Volpe into the Buffalo crime family. The owner of Tops Continental, Domenic Returra, was visited by Paulo Violi, who spoke on behalf of his brothers-in-law. On March 18, 1987, Giacomo Luppino died of natural causes at the age of 87, whereby Jimmy Luppino took over the family. In a report on the murder of Cece Luppino in early 2019, CBC News made this statement: "Court documents filed by the RCMP [during the Violi trial] show the Luppino family is connected to a web of organized crime stretching from Hamilton to Buffalo, N.Y." The news item added that the "Luppino-Violi family is a faction of the Todaro crime family" that is based in Buffalo and that Rocco and Natale Luppino were members of the latter. In a 1999 interview with Musitano family hitman Kenneth Murdock, he revealed he was ordered to kill Jimmy Luppino, but did not go through with the order. Murdock also claimed that he was waiting for Pat Musitano to approve the murders of Natale Luppino and Vincenzo Luppino, as well as Domenic Violi and Giuseppe Violi. ==The Violis and Luppinos==

A 2002 Halton Police report suggested the Violi brothers, Domenico (Dom) and Giuseppe (Joe) Violi, grandsons to Giacomo Luppino, who moved back to Hamilton with their mother after their father Paolo Violi was killed in Montreal in 1978 by the Sicilian Rizzuto crime family, became affiliated with the Luppino family. Giuseppe Violi was convicted in 1996 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine, which brought him a seven-year prison sentence. Nine people in total were arrested and charged, including Massimiliano Carfagna of Burlington, Ontario and Adriano Scolieri of Vaughan, Ontario, while warrants went out for additional suspects. During the multi-city bust, police seized large quantities of fentanyl and carfentanil, heroin, cocaine and over 250,000 tablets of controlled substances, some three million cigarettes and several gaming machines. In March 2018, Carfagna was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for drug trafficking and weapons offenses, and also stated between March and October 2016, he and Giuseppe Violi agreed to import 200 to 300 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. On June 1, 2018, Giuseppe Violi was sentenced to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty on drug trafficking charges. On December 3, 2018, Domenico Violi was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to trafficking drugs to a paid undercover police agent for more than US$416,000, as part of a three-year RCMP-led police Project OTremens, during which the agent was officially inducted as a "made" member of the Bonanno crime family in Canada, according to an agreed statement of facts. Criminologist Anna Sergi of the University of Essex stated that "A new alliance between Bonanno associates and the Violi family ... is significant, as it suggests a growing prominence for Calabrian mafia — the 'Ndrangheta — within the New York families and in Canada". Domenico Violi admitted to trafficking approximately 260,000 pills, including PCP, ecstasy and methamphetamine to the undercover agent. Wiretaps recorded from 2015 to 2017 also indicated Domenico Violi was made the underboss of the Buffalo crime family by boss Joseph Todaro Jr. in October 2017 in a meeting in Florida, the first Canadian to hold the second-highest position in the American Mafia. After being promoted to underboss, Violi is heard on wiretaps boasting that "he had beaten out 30 other people for the position," indicating the Buffalo family had at least 30 made men which included Canadian members such as the Violi brothers' uncles Natale and Rocco Luppino. During a civil war within the Rizzuto family in the early 2010s, both the Luppino and the Violi families, still angry over the murder of Paolo Violi, supported the anti-Rizzuto faction. On 30 January 2019, Cece Luppino, son of Rocco Luppino, was shot and killed at a home that was owned by his father at 56 Mountain Brow Blvd in Hamilton. Hamilton Police Service called it a "targeted" hit and suggested that the murder might be related to organized crime. Cece Luppino had no criminal record, however. Detective Sergeant Peter Thom provided only this information to the news media: "I've been told he works for a family business down in Stoney Creek", apparently related to a cafe and real estate. A subsequent report in January 2020 by The Hamilton Spectator stated that the business was a "realty training centre with an attached café". No charges had been laid as of that time but the news item added that the Cece Luppino murder might have been committed to "send a message to more powerful family members". The report also referenced a 2015 conversation that had been accessed by police; Cece was heard to say that he did not want to be a "made man" in the organized crime aspect of the family but might become involved if he could be sure of a financial benefit. The Cece Luppino hit may have been related to a home invasion on April 19, 2018, in Hamilton, when three men forced their way into a house at 19 Como Place, owned by Natale Luppino, and stabbed one individual. A police source told CBC News that both of the people in the home at the time were related to Cece Luppino "and are members of the Luppino crime family". In late April 2019, police arrested and charged two of the four suspects in Montreal with attempted murder, while the other two, also from Montreal, were already in custody; none were considered to be Mafia members. At that time of the arrests, there was some speculation as to whether the target of the 2018 incident had actually been Natale Luppino because he was the owner of the house that was targeted. The records also refer to a September 2017 recording made by police indicating that Pat Musitano was already a marked man at that time, but provide no indication as to who had authorized the "hit": "The [police agent] stated that [he] would have thought that ‘they’ would have gotten rid of [Pat Musitano] before his brother, [Angelo Musitano, murdered in May 2017]. D Violi stated that 'they' wanted to show [Pat Musitano]; that it was a message, D Violi thought. They had told D Violi that ... [Pat Musitano] would be gone; that that would be one headache out of the way". In November 2021, Domenico Violi was granted day parole. In April 2023, Giuseppe Violi was granted day parole; he had taken two anger management classes in prison. ==Books==