https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/mafia-legacy-joey-violiThe dark Mafia legacy that Joey Violi says he is trying to outrunVioli would probably rather not talk about his family's mob legacy but it was unavoidable when sitting in prison answering questions for the Parole Board of Canada
by Adrian Humphreys
Published Apr 14, 2023 • Last updated 15 hours ago • 6 minute read
Joey Violi’s extraordinary family and the police probe that ensnared him were always more rousing than the crimes he committed.
His father was the Mafia boss of Montreal until he was murdered by rival gangsters. His uncles were wiped out in that mob war too. His grandfather was the domineering Mafia boss of Ontario and his older brother was caught on wiretaps claiming he was second-in-command of a New York Mafia family.
Violi doesn’t seem to see the same thing as others in that, setting it aside as ancient history rather than legacy.
“My father and my uncles, that’s when we were living in Montreal. I was very young, I was seven years old when my father passed away,” Violi said. “I moved to Hamilton, Ont., when I was around 11 or 12, and so my father’s history was pretty much in Quebec.
“In Hamilton my grandfather was written about, but he passed away in 1987. And the rest of my family now, I know they keep talking about my mom’s family and stuff, but at the end of the day, in my generation or age group, nobody has criminal records. We’re a lot — over a hundred — and nobody has a criminal record, only me and my brother.”
Violi, 52, would probably rather not talk about it but it was unavoidable, especially Thursday, when he sat in Beaver Creek prison answering questions for the Parole Board of Canada.
Violi and his brother, Domenico Violi, were the marquee names when a spectacular police probe wrapped up in 2017, codenamed Project OTremens.
Nobody has a criminal record, only me and my brother
It was an ambitious cross-border probe into organized crime, drugs and guns that featured a “made member” of one of the infamous Five Families of the Mafia in New York City cooperating with law enforcement.
The turncoat mobster wore a wire that recorded private meetings with suspects in Canada and the United States in a four-year investigation. He even recorded his own induction into New York’s Bonanno Mafia family at a ceremony in Canada.
There were arrests in both countries — four in New York and 13 in Canada — as authorities boasted of penetrating organized crime at the highest level.
Violi pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to import cocaine, trafficking cocaine, and trafficking fentanyl and was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2018.
On parole forms he is called Giuseppe Violi but when called on at his parole hearing Thursday, he introduced himself as “Joey.”
He was seeking full parole, or day parole if that wasn’t possible.
He spoke softly, and although he said at the beginning he was “a little nervous,” once he started he seemed at ease. His words were casual and colloquial; his hands and arms darted about to emphasize words before they returned to a respectful clasp on the table in front of him.
He is thick and stalky, with his dark hair brushed back, looking much like his father, and his older brother. A pair of eyeglasses hung from the open neck of his collared shirt.
This was Violi’s first parole request for this sentence, but he has been in prison before. In 1996 he was convicted for a cocaine importation conspiracy and sentenced to almost eight years.
The parole board wanted to know what happened in the 13 years between his release from one serious drug charge and his conviction for another.
He blamed it on the fink.
He didn’t name the turncoat mobster, he didn’t use any names, in fact, except for an old girlfriend, in passing, but it was the Italian-born New York mobster who had snuck into Canada with his wife and son after he was deported from the United States that he was talking about.
After Violi’s first release from prison, he said, he returned to work in the industrial laundry business.
“I had a friend that was always asking me to help him commit crimes because he needed money,” Violi said of the mobster. “I didn’t say no to him, I didn’t say yes either.”
His friend returned to Italy for business but when he tried to return to Canada he was stopped at the border, he said. He asked the Violi brothers to look after his wife and son while he was gone.
Their efforts were generous.
Domenico Violi paid their mortgage, Violi said, and he finished renovating their house. Violi said he was giving half his paycheque to the man’s wife and paid for his son to go to school.
When their friend finally returned to Canada, Violi said the entreaties to commit crimes started again.
“I fell for the fact that I should help him,” Violi said. “That’s when I decided to jump in. I thought of it as an opportunity to get my money back that I used up with him.”
Once in, he went at it “full pop,” he conceded.
“I’m a business guy so wherever I could see I could make a dollar I was going…. I said that if I’m going to get involved, I am going to get involved.”
It was not mentioned at the hearing, but his former friend was working with police at the time and those meetings about crime and the mob and mobsters were being recorded.
“After all this mess,” Violi said, alluding to the police probe and the double agent, “obviously all of what he was telling me, a lot of it was a lie.”
He was foolish to listen to his friend, he said. And greedy.
“At the time I didn’t think of the dangers,” Violi said. “I wasn’t thinking too much of the consequences. I wasn’t thinking I was gambling my wife and kids, our togetherness.
“It’s hard to explain why I didn’t think of it, because it’s the only thing I think about every day since I’ve been in prison.”
The unexpected extent of Violi’s help for the man and his family seemed to bother members of the parole board. One said it seemed like “an obligation,” hinting it was the man’s mob connections that invoked generosity.
“I was just the salami that went overboard to help,” Violi said.
He was asked about police and prison files connecting him to organized crime. Violi said he had no affiliation.
“He said he was affiliated with those guys from America,” Violi said of his turncoat mobster friend. “I’m not affiliated with them, I was affiliated with him, because he was my friend.”
He avoided meeting his friend’s associates visiting from the United States, he said: “Every time I found out they were coming up to meet him, I purposely went on holiday with my wife and kids.”
He also said his family’s history didn’t transfer to the current generation. That’s when he talked about his family’s past: of his father, Paolo Violi, shot dead in 1978 by members of the Rizzuto Mafia clan, and his grandfather, Giacomo Luppino, who led a Mafia clan in Calabria, Italy, until moving to Ontario as the dominant Mafia leader.
Violi said things were difference for him, and different this time when he is released.
“I miss my family a lot. Not just a little bit, but very much. Since I came in, I’ve had pictures of my family on my wall in front of me and beside me and every day I look at them and every day I can’t believe how foolish I was to take advantage of the good life I had with them.”
A parole supervisor with the Correctional Service of Canada supported his release to a half-way house on day parole, but warned of the difficulty of Violi’s family history.
Parolees are often told not to have contact with those involved in criminal activity or criminal associations.
“His family is a crime family,” the parole supervisor said.
The parole board denied him full parole but approved his day parole to a half-way house for six months.
“Thank you very much. Thank you,” Violi said.
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys
