Millennial mobsters making their mark
Expert says new generation is growing up without fear as old structures are being replaced
A new generation is reshaping the underworld with its profound sense of entitlement, impatience and computer skills, a noted organized crime writer says.
Millennials are the changing the face of organized crime, Luis Najera said in an interview Wednesday. “They have a different sense of entitlement. They have a different vision.”
Najera, a Mexican investigative journalist who fled to Canada more than a decade ago after his life was threatened for his reporting on drug cartels, made the comments after the daylight killing of a Roncesvalles wine bar owner last week.
Paolo Caputo, 64, was killed in a shooting that police and underworld sources linked to an earlier Toronto murder involving a mostly millennial, multi-ethnic, pan-Canadian gang called the Wolfpack Alliance.
Caputo’s brother, Martino Caputo, was connected to the Wolfpack Alliance and is serving a life sentence as one of four men convicted of first-degree for killing John Raposo, 35, while he was watching Euro Cup soccer on TV on a crowded patio at the Sicilian Sidewalk Café on College St. in 2012.
At the trial of the four men, prosecutors said Raposo was killed in a plot to steal his share of a 200-kilogram cocaine shipment.
According to police and underworld sources, the Mexican cartel out of Chicago that fronted the drugs to Raposo, Martino Caputo and the others was never fully paid and had grown frustrated with repeated attempts to collect on the $5-million debt.
Paolo Caputo may have been shot over his proximity to the debt, the sources said.
Just a couple decades ago, an outstanding drug debt might have led to a kidnapping to force a payment but there’s less patience for such tactics now, Najera said.
“They are really impatient,” Najera said. “They don’t have a lot of respect for the rules. You either pay or die.”
In part, that’s because old-school leaders like Canada’s Vito Rizzuto are no
longer holding things together, he said.
Rizzuto died suddenly in December 2013, officially of natural causes.
“This new generation is growing up without fear” as rigid old criminal structures are being replaced by looser, wider ranging associations like the Wolfpack Alliance, which includes Mafiosi, a Hells Angel and criminals in their 20s and 30s from a wide range of ethnic groups, Najera said.
The new generation’s profound sense of impatience is reflected by rapid change within Mexico’s cocaine cartels, Najera said. There were seven cartels in the country in 2000, but today there are 12 major cartels and 50 smaller ones.
“Every three to five months, there’s a new group emerging,” Najera said. “They betray. They split.”
Other unsolved GTA murders the sources connect to millennial mobsters include the July 2018 murders of Cosimo Ernesto Commisso, 33, of Woodbridge and Chantelle Almedia, 26, of Toronto.
Commisso was related to Cosimo (the Quail) Commisso of Siderno, Italy, considered by police there to be an ’Ndrangheta organized crime boss.
A Star investigation found some of his Canadian relatives had clashed with the Wolfpack Alliance.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if more incidents like (the Caputo killing) don’t happen in Canada,” explained Najera, who has been awarded the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression International Press Freedom Award.
“The new generation is changing everything.”
“Every three to five months, there’s a new group emerging.” LUIS NAJERA INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST