Son of mob boss sentenced to 8 years

Domenico Violi, son of Paolo Violi, plead guilty in drug trafficking case

Domenico Violi, the Hamilton son of a murdered mob boss, has been sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to trafficking drugs with a “made” member of a New York Mafia family. The New Yorker — who did not testify at Violi’s trial and is not named in court documents — was secretly working as a paid police agent in a threeyear, RCMP-led police opera- tion during which he was officially inducted into the Bonanno Mafia family, according to an agreed statement of facts presented in court Monday.

Violi, 52, showed little expression before Justice George Gage as he was sentenced in a Hamilton courtroom packed with family and supporters.

He hugged his wife and kissed his son on the cheek before he was led into custody.

“This investigation and the prosecution stemming out of it have been a significant achievement,” prosecutor James Clark said in an interview outside court.

Veteran defence lawyer Dean Paquette, who represented Violi, said bringing the police agent into court to testify would have been a “high security risk.”

“The prosecution was probably happy not to have to get him,” Paquette said.

Accounting credit for time served in pretrial custody, Violi has six years and 142 days left to serve in his eight-year sentence.

As part of his plea, the Crown dropped charges of criminal organization against Violi, who in November 2017 was charged with his younger brother, Giuseppe (Joe) Violi, and seven others in a massive drug bust, which was code-named Project OTremens.

At the time, the RCMP called the arrests a “tremendous blow to organized crime in Canada.”

Giuseppe Violi, 48, who managed a linen and laundry services company in Hamilton, was sentenced in June to 16 years in prison for fentanyl and cocaine trafficking.

At the time of their arrests, the RCMP said the Violi brothers were well-established organized criminals with “an international reach.”

Domenico Violi admitted to trafficking approximately 260,000 pills, which included PCP, ecstasy and methamphetamine to the American police agent, who had posed as a mobster.

According to a prosecutor, the agent is currently in an undisclosed location in a witness protection program.

Details of his initiation into the Bonanno crime family were not disclosed in court, nor was the amount of money he was paid for his work as an informant.

According to the agreed statement of facts, the agent paid Domenico Violi $416,000 (U.S.) for the pills. Viol i was paid another $24,600 as his share of the profits, according to the agreed statement.