RIVIÈRE-DES-PRAIRIES DETENTION FACILITY
AN INMATE SWALLOWS HIS CELL PHONE ... TO HIDE IT
Surgery was required to retrieve the device, which the authorities then seized.
DANIEL RENAUD Edition of November 21, 2017,
THE PRESS
Montreal police, have been given a warrant to seize and analyze a cell phone that was swallowed by an accused in prison and removed from his stomach during surgery, according to court documents obtained by La Presse .

The accused in question is 28-year-old Vladimir Laguerre, an individual who has been detained since June and charged with conspiracy and possession of a weapon following the police operation Mazout, to solve a murder and arson in the context tensions within the mafia.

Last summer, he was in possession of a cell phone as big as a car dongle that had passed through the walls of the Rivière-des-Prairies Detention Center and swallowed it just before the guards proceeded. a search in his area.

But the cell phone has never been evacuated by natural means. On August 19, Laguerre was transported to Santa Cabrini Hospital - which is located near the prison - and underwent surgery to allow doctors to remove the device. The phone was then handed over to correctional officers.

"I've already heard about minicellulars that detainees hid in their cavities, but never had adetainee swallow one. We find this little cell phone just like smart phones that arrive by drones. There is now a new problem: phones installed in watches. The evolution of technology gives us headaches, and the problem is always the same: the Department should invest to allow us to detect these devices, "responded the president of the Union of Correctional Officers of Quebec, Mathieu The way.


A LINK WITH A MURDER VICTIM?
The police asked, by mandate, to be able to seize the phone to have it analyzed, because it believes that it contains information which could help it in the investigation and the procedures of Fuel oil and - without making play on words - on the internal wars and the tensions that still shake the Montreal mafia.

The police, who obtained the phone, wants to check whether there was any exchange between the Laguerre device and those of Antonio De Blasio, an individual linked to the mafia killed in front of his son who came from complete a football training session on the evening of August 16 in a park in the Borough of Saint-Léonard.

Antonio De Blasio had been linked to organized crime for several years. He was the link between various Italian groups and various street gangs. He was the one who recruited members of street gangs to commit various crimes on behalf of organized crime, "reads the documents.

De Blasio himself was the subject of an investigation as part of the Mazout project. The examination of the file continued in his case, and he could have been accused of gangsterism if he had not been killed, one learns also in the papers.

OTHER REVEALING MESSAGES
According to the documents, before being murdered, De Blasio also exchanged text messages with some of the five individuals linked to street gangs convicted of the murders of Gaétan Gosselin and Vincenzo Scuderi, committed in January 2013. Gosselin was the Raynald Desjardins's friend and confidant, and Scuderi had the same status with the late clan leader Giuseppe De Vito, who was poisoned by cyanide in his cell at Donnacona Penitentiary in the summer of 2013.

"De Blasio has, for the duration of the electronic surveillance, put pressure on several people to get money for the five defendants. He had to take care of the money for the canteens, for the payment of legal fees, for the defendants and their respective families ", describes a police officer in the documents.

The analysis of the murder of Gaétan Gosselin directs the police directly to the Sicilian clan, says one.

An important meeting was held in downtown Montreal on April 18, between De Blasio and another individual, on one side, and two influential people associated with the Sicilian clan, on the other. The purpose of the meeting would have been to discuss upcoming payments for the five accused, according to the documents.

On the night of April 25, 2017, arson was lit at the Loreto Funeral Complex, a legitimate facade of the Rizzuto and Renda families. The police believe that the fire sponsors wanted to put pressure on the Sicilian clan for a sum of money to be paid.

On May 9, the Sicilians would have paid the money, according to the police. Five weeks later, the five accused of the Gosselin and Scuderi murders pleaded guilty to a reduced chief of conspiracy and were sentenced to between 9 and 18 years.