Antonio:

You may want to take a look at

http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthr...true#Post666947

to see the names of certain senior members of the old Rizzuto organization, as well as their dates and places of birth. You may also want to read my arguments in that thread about concerted Montreal Mafia collaboration with 'ndrangheta groups in the Greater Toronto Area and in Calabria, specifically with the Commisso clan.

One Montreal-area poster on here, eurodave, is quite certain del Balso, specifically, is barese, and I have found this poster to be not only a reliable source for this type of information but also someone who opened my eyes to how often Canadian organized-crime reporters, authors, and law-enforcement officers misidentify the ancestry of Montreal Mafia members. If you click on the above link, you'll also see that Rocco Sollecito and Beniamino Zappia were born in Puglia. Where am I going with this?

Zappia is a mainland Italian who was living in Milan before he was arrested. He was one of the most important money launderers for the old Rizzuto organization, sort of a trustee. However, note that Zappia not only had contact with senior Rizzuto clan members Vito, Nick Sr., and Renda but also with other senior Rizzuto administration members who are not Sicilian, i.e., with Arcadi and, more important, with the aforementioned Sollecito. A common error made by many organized-crime writers and journalists is to list this Zappia's place of birth as Cattolica Eraclea, Agrigento, the birthplace of many Rizzuto clan members -- this error is somewhat understandable, as Zappia did own some property in this town, as well as some assets, all of which were seized when he was arrested a number of years ago. The connections between Sollecito, Zappia, and del Balso, as fellow pugliesi, would be very significant. However, having made the same mistake of assuming what I have read somewhere is true, I checked the occurrence of the surname del Balso and I actually found it to be a surname found in Molise, not Puglia.

Antonio "Tony" Volpato, often labelled a member of the "Calabrian faction," or le clan Calabrais, in the Montreal Mafia, actually has northern Italian ancestry, having been born in Padua, in Veneto.

For me, the biggest revelation in the last year is the discovery that Joe Di Maulo, often identified as one of the leading Calabrian members of the "Calabrian faction" in the Montreal Mafia, actually has ancestry from Campobasso in the region of Molise. Another source, who even has a date and place of birth for Di Maulo, told me that Di Maulo was born in Campobasso (but the source is unsure whether this refers to the comune (town) or the provincia (province). Di Maulo is currently the most senior member of the Montreal Mafia, with a criminal career spanning more than 50 years. He and other members of the old Cotroni-Violi group are often wrongly identified as being Calabrian because Cotroni and Violi were. I have yet to see a newspaper article or book that specifically mentions where Di Maulo was born, only that he is Calabrian or was born in Calabria.

Di Maulo has such a stature in the Montreal Mafia that he could conceivably be the current or eventual godfather of the Montreal Mafia. But just as we don't know whether Raynald Desjardins, his ex-brother-in-law, still has loyalty to Vito Rizzuto, we don't know whether Di Maulo still has loyalty to Vito. Both Desjardins and Rizzuto, along with Domenico Arcuri Jr. and others, may have become fed up with how the Montreal Mafia was run after Vito was imprisoned in January 2004, especially in the hands of the Calabrian Francesco Arcadi. Di Maulo may have had nothing to do with the murders of Renda, Cun trera, and Nick Sr., but he may be sitting atop the Montreal Mafia at the moment. If he is, and assuming he's not arrested as a result of being investigated right now, the Montreal Mafia will have, for the first time ever, a godfather who is neither Calabrian nor Sicilian -- food for thought.