Prosecutor defends warrant used to search Rizzuto’s home
Information gathered as part of an investigation that led to the search of Leonardo Rizzuto’s home in Laval corroborates an informant’s allegation that he was a “decision-maker” among organized crime groups, a prosecutor argued in court on Thursday. Prosecutor Matthew Ferguson made the argument before Quebec Court Judge Julie Riendeau as part of the Crown’s effort to justify why police searched Rizzuto’s home in November 2015 while they made arrests in Project Magot, a lengthy investigation into how the Mafia, Hells Angels and street gangs in Montreal had joined forces to traffic cocaine together. The same day Rizzuto’s home was searched, the Sûreté du Québec alleged that he and his longtime friend Stefano Sollecito were the heads of the Montreal Mafia. Both men were charged with conspiring to traffic in cocaine and with committing an offence for the benefit of a criminal organization. In February, the Crown announced that it would no longer prosecute them on those charges after Superior Court Justice Éric Downs ruled that the police acted illegally when they recorded conversations inside a conference room of a law firm owned by Loris Cavaliere where Rizzuto worked as a lawyer and Sollecito was the client of another attorney. Rizzuto is now on trial on charges related to the police’s seizure of two firearms and five grams of cocaine from his home. On Wednesday, his lawyers Frank Addario and Dominique Shoofey argued the warrant used to enter Rizzuto’s home was tainted by the same violations of his Charter rights that caused Downs to rule that the recordings were illegal. On Thursday, Ferguson argued that other evidence gathered in Project Magot justifies the issuing of the warrant. Lawyers on both sides have focused on how, on Oct. 21, 2014, an informant (identified only as J.J. in an affidavit used to obtain the warrant) told his police handler that the “Italian decision-makers” in Montreal were Rizzuto, Sollecito, Vito Salvaggio and Tonino Callocchia (a man who was later killed in December 2014). Addario argued that there is nothing else in the Project Magot evidence to back up that claim and others made by J.J. But Ferguson countered that there is evidence that Rizzuto acted like a “decision-maker” while he interacted with other people who were ultimately arrested in Project Magot. The prosecutor provided Riendeau with a detailed chronology of what police observed after the arrest of street gang leaders Gregory Woolley and Dany Sprinces Cadet on Aug. 23, 2015 and seizure of their BlackBerrys, whose PGP software allowed users to encrypt text messages, emails and other files on the device. During the investigation, several people, including Sollecito, referred to the devices as “machines.” The day after the arrests, Rizzuto, 49, Cavaliere, Sollecito, Salvaggio and a convicted drug dealer named Erasmo Crivello met inside a clothing store owned by Cavaliere’s wife located below Cavaliere’s law firm on St. Laurent Blvd. Their conversation was secretly recorded by police and Cavaliere told Rizzuto and Sollecito that if Woolley was indeed arrested with his Blackberry, “it was only a matter of time before the police come forward with charges.” Sollecito was recorded saying that he was going to change his “machine.” Ferguson noted that three of the men who attended the meeting inside the clothing store had been identified as “decision-makers” by J.J. 10 months earlier and, during the meeting at the clothing store, they were reacting to the arrest of Woolley, the key person investigated in Project Magot. The only person not in attendance who was on J.J.’s list, Ferguson noted, was Callocchia, who had been killed in December. The following day, Rizzuto and Sollecito were under police surveillance when they arrived at Cavaliere’s law firm. Woolley showed up a little while later and, Ferguson said on Thursday, the inference could be made that all three met to further discuss how to handle the possibility of the police unlocking the encrypted files.