Now Given the arrests in Buffalo and the article talking about bugging Leonard Falzone's car to see how Buffalo was running its own drug ring, how can Lee Coppola write this in his 1998 Buffalo News article "The Withered Arm?"
"It' s not that the mob wasn't involved in drugs," says one former law enforcement official. "It's just that it never bothered to try to control it."
A Buffalo drug case offers an illustration. In 1983, the FBI raided a ceramic tile store on Delaware Avenue that was a front for high-grade heroin entering the United States inside wooden pallets. The man running the operation, Andrea Aiello, had ties to the Mafia families of New York City and Sicily and chose a lengthy prison sentence over cooperation with the FBI. But what made the case even more interesting was that Aiello was operating without the permission -- without even the knowledge -- of Buffalo's Mafia bosses.
At least a few years later in an operation that arose from this arrest, the Buffalo Bosses were very much in control of drug trafficking. Further Todaro put Johnny Pops in charge of his Canadian crews when he took over in ‘83 or ‘84. Pops was definitely involved in the drug trade since the French Connection many years earlier.
And by the way, Volpe backed the Pieri faction before Todaro was made boss by the commission. Papalia always backed Todaro and paid his tax... So Todaro always knew what was going on with the Toronto drug trafficking and benefited from it. Volpe wouldn't pay tribute and had become a â€lone wolf.†That is why Todaro had him taken out.
