Ex-mafioso gets early parole on gun charge
A man who was considered a rising star in the Montreal Mafia until he was caught with a loaded gun has been granted early parole.
Danny (Arm) De Gregorio, 49, appeared before the board Friday morning at a penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines and was granted both day and full parole hours later. He will be transferred to a halfway house near the end of May and will be granted a full release in October.
He was sentenced in November to a 32-month prison term for having carried a loaded firearm, with the serial number scratched off, in 2011, while the Rizzuto organization was in conflict with other Mafia clans seeking to assume leadership in Montreal. De Gregorio has had ties in the past to the clans that are considered rivals to the Rizzuto organization.
De Gregorio told the board the same thing he did before he was sentenced: that he was carrying the firearm because of an attempt on his life in 2009, when he was shot at least four times. He also repeated several times that he stopped associating with people in the Mafia years ago because of the attempt on his life. But before granting him the release, the board asked De Gregorio about the legitimate job he had just before he was sentenced late last year.
De Gregorio worked as “a pizza man” at Linguini, a restaurant that used to be on Highway 40 in Baie-d’Urfé that burned down two days before he was sentenced on Nov. 29.
Marie-Claude Frenette, one of two parole board members who conducted the hearing, noted that police have yet to establish if the fire was deliberately set.
“It seems to be more accidental,” De Gregorio said, adding he has sought information on the fire while incarcerated. “They have found nothing criminal so far.”
In an email, the Montreal police informed the Montreal Gazette on Friday that the fire is still under investigation and that its origins are “suspicious.”
De Gregorio had told the courtappointed person who prepared his pre-sentencing report that he purchased the gun in 2009, after someone tried to kill him outside a workout gym in St-Léonard. He said that by the time the Montreal police found the gun inside his car on Feb. 4, 2011, his life was no longer in danger and he had forgotten it was there. He apparently offered no explanation as to why a bulletproof vest was strapped to the back of the driver’s seat in his car.
In 2006, De Gregorio was identified as the manager of a bar in St-Léonard owned by Alessandro Sucapane, 52, a close friend of Giuseppe De Vito. De Vito was an influential Mafioso who despised the Rizzuto organization and died of cyanide poisoning in a penitentiary in 2013. (Sucapane is serving a 10-year prison term.)
In 2008, De Gregorio was arrested and charged in connection with a kidnapping. Charges were dropped against him and several other men arrested in the case. But during his 2008 arrest, the police searched his house in Laval and found $138,000 in cash, landing him in trouble with Revenue Canada and Revenue Quebec. He reached a deal to pay taxes on undeclared revenue in 2012 but, during his sentencing hearing last year, he said he still owes between $40,000 and $50,000 to both governments.
In between the time that De Gregorio pleaded guilty to possessing the firearm, on Nov. 10, 2014, and when he was sentenced last November, he worked at Linguini. In December, Le Journal de Montréal reported that about 20 men with Mafia ties from Ontario and Quebec were at the restaurant in October, just weeks before the fire.