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Beating the Mafia at their own game: After years of paying a ‘protection’ tax, Palermo businesses came together to fight back
On the windows of his Fabio Conticello’s Palermo restaurant, beside the notices of awards and which credit cards are accepted, is an orange circle around an X, bisected by black letters: “Addiopizzo.”
It is the logo of a grassroots anti-Mafia campaign causing a sensation here, igniting a once unimaginable crusade of community activism challenging the omnipotence of the crime cartels that have held some sovereignty over this island since before the founders of the Antica had learned to cook.
Addiopizzo, which means “goodbye pizzo,” represents a bold declaration, a solemn promise and a hope for the future.
Pizzo is an illicit tax imposed by the mob on businesses in a gangster’s territory and has been a constant money-maker for Cosa Nostra, the proper name of the Mafia born on the island of Sicily.
The word pizzo is Sicilian dialect for a bird’s beak. The image of a bird moving from flower to flower sipping nectar from each conjured its use for the protection racket, where shops are intimidated into paying a monthly fee to be left alone.
The name — and the extortion — have spread, throughout Italy and Europe and to North America. In Canada, businesses in Montreal, Toronto, York Region, Hamilton and St. Catharines face demands to pay pizzo to the local Mafia. (Adrian Humphreys for National Post)
Reluctant thief leaves Papa John’s with pizza for his hungry family instead of cash
man who apparently summoned the courage to rob a Montana pizza restaurant changed his mind as the clerk started to hand him money, broke down crying and ended up leaving with a pizza to feed his hungry family.
Helena Police Chief Troy McGee praised the clerk’s actions. “I’d say the clerk was pretty astute,” McGee said. “I mean, he knows how to talk to this person. Kind of commiserated with him a little. Talked to him about it and you know actually changed his mind about robbing the place. That was pretty good.” (Fotolia)
Nova Scotia man who poked holes in condoms in attempt to get girlfriend pregnant loses sexual assault appeal
A Nova Scotia man convicted of sexual assault for trying to trick his girlfriend into becoming pregnant by poking holes in her condoms has lost his appeal.
Craig Jaret Hutchinson was given an 18-month prison sentence in December 2011 after his trial heard that he pricked his girlfriend’s condoms with a pin in 2006 so she would get pregnant and not break up with him. (Getty Images)
Maple syrup mafia? Quebec police arrest 18 people after massive maple syrup heist
Quebec police are saying 18 people have now been arrested in a massive maple syrup heist.
The accused face a variety of charges including theft, conspiracy, fraud and receiving stolen goods.
Provincial police said in a statement today they are looking for seven more people in the case. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
Maple syrup heist solved? Police arrest three in massive robbery of national condiment
There have been arrests in the case of a massive maple syrup heist, police announced Tuesday as they celebrated a break in their months-long multi-jurisdictional search for the stolen sticky stuff.
Three people have been detained in connection with the theft of a large quantity of the national condiment from a warehouse in Quebec.
Police also seized vehicles suspected of being used in the illicit trafficking of the stolen syrup, along with equipment like scales and electronic lifts. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
Justin Bieber security team taking ‘every precaution’ as details emerge of alleged murder-for-hire, castration plot
After New Mexico police revealed they’d uncovered an alleged murder-for-hire plot to kill Justin Bieber, the Canadian pop star’s management has released a statement saying they take “every precaution to protect and insure the safety of Justin and his fans.”
Other than that, the star and his security team have been tight-lipped about how seriously they take the threat.
News of the bizarre assassination plot made news around the world Wednesday after Albuquerque’s KRQE reported that Mark Staake, 41, and his nephew Tanner Ruane, 23, had allegedly been hired to castrate and murder the singer. (Tim Boyles/Getty Images for Jingle Ball 2012)
Tax whiz kid by day, drug lord by night: The double-life of ‘mega-trafficker’ jailed after three-month probe
After completing a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in taxation at prestigious universities, Brian Shin landed a coveted job as a tax consultant with Deloitte & Touche, a global professional services giant. He quit that coveted job, however, when he realized it meant a steep pay cut from his other — secret — line of work.
“He quickly appreciated that he could make far greater income by continuing his marijuana wholesaling enterprise, and he did not have to be bothered with all of those tax obligations he had learned about at graduate school,” said Ontario Superior Court Justice John R. McIsaac.
Shin then began a perplexing double life: by day energetic entrepreneur, accumulating peerless letters of reference, and by night as a career “mega-trafficker” and underworld banker.
“I love my job,” Shin recently enthused, “I make a lot of people happy.”
After slitting his wife’s throat, Toronto man complained of unbearable burden of children’s insufficiently Muslim clothes
The night he surrendered to Toronto police, Peer Khairi likened himself to an overburdened elephant, painting a pitiful image of his life in the months before he slit his wife’s throat.
“He said that it was unbearable,” Det.-Sgt. Peter Code testified Tuesday at Mr. Khairi’s second-degree murder trial in Ontario Superior Court. “He went on to make a comparison by stating that even an elephant, when it has too much weight on its back, will start to moan or cry.”
For Mr. Khairi, the court heard, that weight was his family’s willingness to embrace Canadian culture after emigrating from Afghanistan by way of India. It was the fact that his children did not dress sufficiently Muslim. It was that his wife not only allowed this, but stood up for those freedoms, and her own.
The Rizzutos’ Sicilian roots: Tracing the ties that bind Montreal’s Mafia & Quebec’s corruption inquiry to Cattolica Eraclea
In this hilltop village, a slightly otherworldly place that retains an aura of the frontier, a full-sized car barely fits down the cluttered, claustrophobic streets until the road suddenly empties into an airy public square fronted by a marvellous clock and bell tower.
It is a decidedly rustic locale where one finds ground zero for both the Quebec corruption scandal and the unfolding drama of the return to Canada of the country’s biggest name in crime.
Despite making headlines in Canada, at the town hall next door to the clock tower, there is little interest in talking about the town’s most famous export: Vito Rizzuto, the once imperious Mafia boss.
Mr. Rizzuto left this village in 1954, when he was eight, and settled in Montreal with his family, a clan already entrenched in the Mafia of Sicily. His family went on to dominate the underworld in his new home.
Released this month from a prison in the U.S., where he served his sentence for three New York gangland murders, the embattled mobster was immediately deported back to Canada.
As he acclimatizes to freedom, his family’s affairs continue to be revealed at Quebec’s Charbonneau commission probing corruption in the construction industry. With each bombshell — about political financing, crooked business cartels and payments to the mob — the importance of the town of Cattolica Eraclea is never far away (Photos Adrian Humphreys/National Post; Postmedia News)
Canadian crime: Millions of dollars worth of maple syrup stolen from Quebec warehouse
Lock up your Waffle Houses, eh? Bandits in Quebec have made off with millions of dollars worth of maple syrup from a St-Louis-de-Blandford warehouse, where 10 million pounds of syrup, worth more than $30 million, was being temporarily housed.
The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, responsible for the global strategic maple syrup reserve, had kept about the theft the new quiet at first, hoping it would help police catch the thieves.
Quebec is responsible for 70 to 80% of the world’s maple syrup, according to the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers federation. The federation noted that several U.S. states had “a very low, indeed catastrophic, harvest during the 2012 season” while “the Quebec harvest … remained normal.” (Getty)
Toronto’s Little Italy shooting victim had long association with bikers, police say
The day after a brazen daytime shooting in Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood, a single bouquet of flowers lay outside the Sicilian Sidewalk Cafe in memory of the 35-year-old victim who died at the scene.
The shooting during a Euro 2012 soccer match appeared to be targeted, and sources say the slain man once belonged to an outlaw motorcycle gang, prompting police to investigate possible mob links. A second victim was wounded in the attack.
Police tape still surrounded the cafe on Tuesday, trapping vehicles inside the still-active crime scene, and tables and chairs remained strewn about the patio, seemingly abandoned in terror as a soccer fans fled the scene. A pool of dried blood was still visible on the patio.
Luka Rocco Magnotta’s alleged victim identified as Concordia student Lin Jun
Police revealed today they have uncovered a key piece of evidence in the Montreal body parts murder mystery by identifying the victim of alleged killer Luka Rocco Magnotta.
Magnotta, 29, a self-confessed Canadian porn star wanted in connection with a killing that saw a torso left in a suitcase and a hand and foot mailed to the Ottawa offices of the Liberal and Conservative parties fled to Paris on the day of the May 25 murder, police believe.
Detectives revealed today his alleged victim is Lin Jun, a 33-year-old Concordia University student from Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Manhunt underway for Luka Rocco Magnotta as police search for missing body parts
The police had finished their work inside and Apartment 208 was pretty much stripped bare, but the stomach-turning stench and darkened red stain on the mattress left little doubt that something terrible had happened here.
“The smell of death is not funny,” Eric Schorer, the building’s superintendent, said as he opened the door Wednesday afternoon. “If you look at the bed, that’s where it happened.”
Within hours, Montreal police would issue a wanted bulletin for the tenant of the one-room apartment, 29-year-old Luka Rocco Magnotta, sought for one of the most gruesome killings in Montreal in recent memory.
Not only was the unidentified victim dismembered, not only were two body parts apparently mailed to political parties in Ottawa, but it has emerged that the killer filmed his crime and posted it on the Internet. The snuff film titled 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick, depicting the dismemberment of an Asian male body and various indignities to the remains, has provoked online debate about its veracity since it was posted last week. Police have confirmed the video depicts the actual crime.
Related:
Police probe video of porn star suspect allegedly dismembering victim
Luka Rocco Magnotta dated Karla Homolka, police confirm
Political mastermind behind Stephen Harper made grisly discovery of human foot
The web can help topple dictators, but it can also embolden killers
Police looking for more witnesses in naked man’s face-eating attack
Authorities in Miami looked for more witnesses after a naked man who refused to stop chewing on the face of another naked man on a busy highway ramp, despite being shot by police, was finally shot to death.
Detective William Moreno said police want to understand what led to the grisly scene in which a witness said the man — identified by authorities as Rudy Eugene, 31 — growled when a police officer told him to stop his attack.
The victim, who has not been identified, is hospitalized in critical condition. Local reports said most of the man’s face was gone — his nose bitten, his eyes gouged, his skin ripped away. (Screenshot/AP Photo/The Miami Herald)
