A Montreal man, named as part of the Mafia clan of Vito Rizzuto, pleaded guilty in New York City Thursday to international cocaine trafficking after agents seized millions of dollars in his Beverly Hills home and luxury car and found that millions more were being flown across the continent in private planes each week.
Alessandro Taloni, 39, was one of 10 members of a high-flying Montreal-based ring that linked members of the Mafia, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, aboriginal smugglers and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel into a $1-billion marijuana, cocaine, and Ecstasy empire, authorities said.
Taloni was sent from Montreal to Los Angeles to receive the network’s drug money — huge sums from the New York sale of Canadian-grown marijuana being routinely flown to Los Angeles aboard private chartered planes.
On Oct. 13, 2010, U.S. drug agents intercepted one of the planes; inside they found US$5.5-million in cash.
The cash couriers were prompted to say a code word before passing suitcases of cash to Taloni at high-end hotels, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, popular with royals, tycoons and Hollywood greats.
He used the money to buy cocaine from the Mexican cartel and arranged for it to be smuggled to Canada where it was “distributed by members and associates of the Rizzuto crime family,” court documents say.
Authorities seized more than $2.6-million and 83 kilograms of cocaine that was found in Taloni’s Mercedes Benz sedan, Beverly Hills home and various stash houses also in Beverly Hills, in 2010 after the organization was infiltrated by cooperating government witnesses.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has asked a New York judge to order an anonymous jury be convened to hear the case against the Quebec man authorities say was the head of the drug empire.
Prosecutors say Jimmy Cournoyer, 33, of Laval, known by the nicknames Cosmo and Superman, has such vast resources and extensive reputation for the use of firearms, violence, threats and obstruction of justice that the unusual step is necessary.
Mr. Cournoyer sat down with members of the Hells Angels and with senior members of the Rizzuto mob to broker ever-larger deals, looking for mob financing in return for him using his cross-border smuggling routes to supply them with drugs and guns, U.S. authorties allege.
Although U.S. authorities say Taloni is an associate of the Rizzuto crime family, Mr. Rizzuto was not named in the indictment.
Mr. Cournoyer faces charges of bringing high-potency marijuana from British Columbia to Quebec and smuggling it into the United States through the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve.
A major narcotics distributor who used his connections to powerful international organized crime groups to obtain and distribute tens of millions of dollars’ worth of deadly narcotics
Taloni will receive a minimum 10 year sentence to a maximum of life imprisonment and, along with forfeiting the money already seized, could face a maximum fine of $10-million.
“Taloni was a major narcotics distributor who used his connections to powerful international organized crime groups to obtain and distribute tens of millions of dollars’ worth of deadly narcotics,” said Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney for Brooklyn.
“Alessandro Taloni — Cournoyer’s manager for cocaine operations on the West Coast — was previously arrested in Canada for extorting a business,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Tiscione.
“At the time of his arrest, Canadian law enforcement seized a telephone from Taloni that contained contact numbers for a number of prominent members of the Montreal Mafia — including Vito Rizzuto, the boss of the Rizzuto crime family, alternatively referred to as ‘The Sixth Family.’”
Mr. Cournoyer lived a playboy lifestyle with a professional model girlfriend, international travel and owned one of the world’s elite sports cars: a Bugatti Veyron worth about $2-million.
Taloni is scheduled for sentencing in November.
Source:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/23/...ne-trafficking/
