The Cotroni crime family, originally Cotrone (), was an Italian 'Ndrangheta-type organized crime syndicate (or 'Ndrina) based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considered the family a branch of the Bonanno crime family of New York.
The organization was established in the 1940s by Vincenzo Cotroni, a Calabrian immigrant from Mammola. Its territory once covered most of southern Quebec and Ontario. An internal war broke out between the Calabrian and Sicilian factions of the family in the late 1970s, which resulted in the death of acting captain Paolo Violi and his brothers. This allowed the Sicilian Rizzuto faction, a Mafia crime family, to overtake the Cotroni's Calabrian faction as the preeminent crime family in Montreal. Vincenzo died of cancer in 1984, followed by his brother Frank in 2004.
History
In 1924, Vincenzo Cotroni immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, with his two sisters, Marguerita and Palmina, and his brother Giuseppe; his two other brothers, Frank and Michel, were later born in Montreal. In the late 1920s, Vincenzo Cotroni attended a wrestling school where his teacher, the professional wrestler Armand Courville, ended up joining the family. Cotroni and Courville became infamous in Montreal for their roles in the "baseball bat elections" of the 1930s as the two men worked as enforcers for the Quebec Liberal Party, using baseball bats to threaten or beat up voters opposed to the Liberals. When the Union Nationale won the 1936 election, Cotroni and Courville switched their loyalties. Cotroni and Courville, for their role in the "baseball bat elections", forged political connections that ensured immunity from prosecution for decades to come afterwards.
In the 1950s, the family formed a strong connection to the New York-based Bonanno crime family, as the crime family began controlling the majority of Montreal's drug trade. In 1953, Carmine "Lilo" Galante, an influential member of the Bonanno family, arrived in Montreal and worked with Cotroni. Galante planned to make Montreal a pivotal location in the importation of heroin from overseas for distribution in New York City and across the United States in the French Connection. Police also estimated that Galante was collecting gambling profits in Montreal worth about $50 million per year. In April 1956, due to Galante's strong-arm extortion tactics, the Canadian government deported him back to the United States.
As is the norm with Mafia families, the elite status of "made men" was limited to those who were Italian or of Italian descent, with the status of associate open to those of non-Italian background. The vast majority of the "made men" originated from the Mezzogiorno (the south of Italy), but most unusually there was no rules against members from different regions, with Calabrians and Sicilians both serving in the Cotroni family. In 1975, Dr. Alberto Sabatino of the Italian Polizia di Stato testified as an expert witness at the Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé (CECO) that the Cotroni family was "exceptional" in having Sicilians and Calabrians working together. Sabationo testified: "Such a mixture of Calabrian and Sicilian gangsters does not occur in Italy". At the height of their power in the 1960s and 1970s, the Cotroni family was divided along geographical lines with each capo running a particular district of Montreal. The Sicilian Lugi Greco ran the family's operations in the west end of Montreal; the Canadian-born Frank Cotroni ran the family's operations in the Saint-Laurent district; Nicola Di Iorio, likewise Canadian-born, ran the Sorrento Gang; and the Calabrian Paolo Violi served as Vic Cotroni's deputy. The two most important non-Italian members of the Cotroni family were Armand Courville and William Obront. Obront, the "Canadian Meyer Lanksy" served as a sort of chief financial officer for the Cotroni family in charge of money laundering and stock market fraud. Courville, a French-Canadian professional wrestler who had been a close friend of Vic Cotroni since they were teenagers was known to be Cotroni's most trusted adviser.