High surveillance release for gang leader Gregory Woolley
After spending the last five years behind bars, Gregory Woolley will be released at two-thirds of his sentence in the coming days, La Presse found, and police fear that the return of the dreaded gang leader to the streets of Montreal will be not do smoothly.
Woolley took up a lot of space in the metropolis between 2012 and 2015, when most of the Hells Angels arrested after Operation SharQc in 2009 were still being held or had to meet conditions. A trusted man of the late godfather Vito Rizzuto, he also took advantage of this period to get closer to Stefano Sollecito, whom the police considered to be the head of the Montreal mafia in the fall of 2015.
"He's watching my back, I'm watching his," Sollecito said of Woolley in a conversation picked up by investigators during Project Magot-Mastiff. Changes
But five years later, sources wonder if Stefano Sollecito's influence as the leader of the Sicilian clan of the Montreal mafia is still as great.
The Hells Angels are now the strongest in Quebec, including in parts of the metropolis, police say. The plot to kill Raynald Desjardins, which Woolley allegedly hatched in 2015 with former Hells Angels warrior Maurice Boucher, has not been unanimous among bikers, according to our information. That's without counting gang members, who might take a dim view of Woolley's eventual return, still remembering a forced gang union in blood in 2012.
According to our information, Montreal organized crime has profited from the pandemic, by going back into the shadows and making a lot of money with its traditional activities: sports betting, underground gambling, drug trafficking and others. Everything is fine, then. And when everything is going well, there are no conflicts.
It will be necessary to see the place and the part that the environment will reserve for it. He may not have the same role and importance as before. The stars are no longer aligned for him as they were in 2012 ", analyzes a source. “When Woolley was around, there was a course for others to follow. If he wants to take his place and reestablish that course of action, it might not be to everyone's satisfaction and there might be a stir. If Woolley wants to resume his place, he will have to deal with new facts that emerged during his detention, â€adds an observer of the criminal and police scene in Montreal.
