Montreal Mafia & Hells Angels Figures Arrested as Part of Large Takedown Linked to Cooperating Hitman

In total, 16 individuals are on the police list in this first wave of arrests, 11 people linked to organized crime have been arrested, five are wanted, including three who are believed to be overseas.

Davide Barberio acted as a street boss and enforcer within the Montreal Mafia.

Some of the individuals are already incarcerated for other crimes, including Nicola Spagnolo and Pietro D’Adamo. 

Police are still looking for gang leader Jean-Ismaël Zéphir; and arrested members Michel Cliche, Daniele Guarna, Pierry Philogène, Darius Perry and Patrick Gilbert.

The arrests took place in the cities of Montreal, Laval, Blainville, Shefford, Saint-Lazare, Repentigny, Quebec City, and Rosemère. Nearly 150 police officers are participating in this massive operation.

Leo Rizzuto arrived at the SPVM’s Eastern Operations Centre at 6:50 a.m. in a convoy of four vehicles. Sitting in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, he remained impassive, staring outside through the lowered window, while a photographer from La Presse captured the scene.

“We’re showing that no matter what crime you commit, whether it’s in 2011 or 2021 […] there will be an end to it,” Commander Francis Renaud, head of the SPVM’s Organized Crime Section, said at a press briefing regarding the impact of the operation. “It’s also a message to the families we’re giving, that we’ll never stop working. We’ll find them, and we’ll continue to persecute them and bring them before the courts.”

With this salvo, the deputy director general of the SQ’s Criminal Investigations Department, Benoit Dubé, hopes to “restore the truth and justice for those who have lost a loved one.”

Gregory Wooley, murdered in November 2023 in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Samy Tamouro, killed the following month by CJNG gunmen in Mexico, would probably also have been on Thursday morning’s arrest toll as well given their connections to a former hitman turned witness.

Hitman Turned Witness

According to court documents, Frédérick Silva, who began working with police on June 30, 2022, made approximately sixty video statements about murders, attempted murders and other plots that occurred or were fomented within Montreal’s organized crime scene since the late 1990s.

According to our information, during the 2010s, Silva allegedly committed murders himself and accomplices for the Rizzuto clan and then became part of a group that also contracted for Hells Angels, gang members, and other influential individuals in organized crime.

Silva was also involved in direct discussions with other individuals on murder contracts, and even continued to conspire with accomplices after his arrest in February 2019, using cell phones he had managed to smuggle into his sector of the Montreal (Bordeaux) Detention Facility.

The suspects arrested Thursday are expected to face several charges related to murders and other attacks committed within the Montreal Mafia or organized crime in general since the 2010s.

La Presse has already revealed that Frédérick Silva became a member of the Rizzuto family in 2014, after organizing the murder of gang leader Ducarme Joseph, suspected of involvement in the December 2009 murder of Nicola Rizzuto, Vito Rizzuto’s eldest son.

After Silva began making his revelations, the Montreal Police Service (SPVM) and the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) launched a major investigation called Alliance aimed at solving as many crimes as possible revealed by the former hitman.

Between June 2023 and 2024, for a period of one year, 35 suspects were wiretapped as part of the Alliance investigation, court documents reveal, and several searches were carried out during the investigation, notably in December 2023.

In a sworn statement in support of a motion filed in court last November, SPVM Major Crimes detective sergeant Laurent Villemaire stated that investigators seized at least 150 electronic devices during the searches and that analysis of many of them had not yet begun or been completed.

Several prosecutors from the Serious Crime and Special Affairs Bureau of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions of Quebec (DPCP) are assigned to this major investigation, the most significant targeting organized crime since SharQc in 2009 and Magot-Mastiff in 2015.

The prosecution filed several requests for extensions to the retention of property seized from the suspects, some of which are still active, and explained the reasons for these requests for additional time.

“Given the Special Witness’s (Silva) unique profile and his extensive criminal history, significant corroboration work must be carried out over the sixty completed statements. Multiple related files must be analyzed and retrieved (in part or in full). Disclosure must then be organized in a coherent manner, all with a view to possible prosecution,” testified SPVM investigators Villemaire and Caroline Razza in a motion presented to the court last February.

Murder Accusations

The judicial process has now begun. The court appearances took place in Montreal this afternoon. Michel Cliche, Sasha Krolik, Vito Salvaggio, Mario Sollecito, Stefano Sollecito, Nicola Spagnolo, and Leonardo Rizutto are accused of the first-degree murder of Lorenzo Lopresti, which occurred in 2011 in Montreal.

They are also accused of conspiring together, with Silva and others, to commit the murders of Lorenzo Lopresti, Giuseppe Renda, Moreno Gallo, Antonio Vanelli, Raynald Desjardins, Joseph DiMaulo, Salvatore Montagna and Antonio Pietrantonio.

Patrick Gilbert, Gianpietro Tiberio and Jean-Ismel Zéphir are accused of the premeditated murder of Domenico Facchini in the winter of 2012 and of an attempted murder by firearm targeting Vito D’Orazio the same day.

Richard Larivière is accused of the murders of Vincent Lamer, Sébastien Beauchamps, and Gaëtan Sévigny, as well as of attempting to kill Jean-Guy Bourgouin. 

He is also accused of conspiring with Silva and Samy Tamouro to have them murdered.

Davide Barberio, Pietro D’Adamo, Daniele Guarna, Darius Perry and Pierry Philogène are accused of the premeditated murder of Charles-Olivier Boucher-Savard in 2021.

Sources La Presse, Borderland Beat, TVA Nouvelles