The motive for why two brothers from Montreal were killed on a rural farm five years ago involves a conflict that dates back even further, after Mob boss Vito Rizzuto was extradited to the United States and convicted of racketeering.

After Rizzuto pleaded guilty in 2007 and was incarcerated in the U.S., the organization he controlled for decades was suddenly left without a leader, and the group came under attack in 2010 and 2011. When he was released and returned to Montreal in November 2012, he appeared to regain control of the Montreal Mafia until he died of cancer a year later.

The trial of Marie-Josée Viau and Guy Dion, accused of taking part in the murders of brothers Vincenzo and Giuseppe Falduto, revealed that by 2016, the Rizzuto organization was once again under serious attack. The jury that heard Viau and Dion’s trial began its sequestered deliberation Friday afternoon.

The hit man who shot the Falduto brothers, and who later became an informant for the Sûreté du Québec, was the key witness in the trial. The informant, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, revealed that Salvatore Scoppa and his brother, Andrea, paid him to kill the Falduto brothers as well as Rocco Sollecito, one of the men who remained loyal to Rizzuto in his absence.

For years, the Montreal Mafia was led by men of Sicilian origin. The informant said the Scoppa brothers were of Calabrian origin and, throughout 2016, sought to eliminate as many people on the Sicilian side of the Montreal Mafia as possible. While testifying, he carefully recalled who was on a hit list the Scoppa brothers kept on encrypted Blackberry devices.

His testimony provided a very rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the conflict and how far the Scoppa brothers were willing to go to take control of the Montreal Mafia. Salvatore Scoppa was later killed in Laval in May 2019, and Andrea, a man who was, according to police sources, once very loyal to Rizzuto, was killed in Pierrefonds five months later.

These are just some of the people the informant claimed were on the Scoppa brothers’ hit list in 2016:

Salvatore Brunetti, 69 — A longtime member of the Hells Angels, who police sources have described for years as someone who meets often with members of the Montreal Mafia. During the 1990s, Brunetti was a member of the Rock Machine, a gang that clashed with the Hells Angels in Quebec for years. But in December 2000, while both gangs were in the middle of a war over drug trafficking turf, Brunetti surprised police when he and seven other men tied to the Rock Machine defected to the Hells Angels. In 2007, Brunetti admitted he used his influence to help cocaine traffickers establish areas where they could deal from in Quebec. He did this while on parole and was sentenced to an overall four-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to gangsterism charges.

Liborio (Pancho) Cuntrera, 53 — The son of Agostino Cuntrera, a known Montreal Mafia leader who remained loyal to the Rizzuto organization while it was under attack in 2010 and 2011. That loyalty likely cost the elder Cuntrera his life. He was killed in June 2010 outside a business he ran in St-Léonard. Six years after his father was killed, Liborio Cuntrera was arrested in Project Clemenza, an RCMP-led investigation into drug trafficking cells tied to the Montreal Mafia. On March 21, 2017, the drug-trafficking charges Cuntrera faced were dropped, reportedly because the RCMP refused to divulge how they intercepted text messages during Project Clemenza.

Francesco Del Balso, 51 — Identified as a young leader in the Rizzuto organization during Project Colisée, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation that resulted in a roundup of leaders from the Rizzuto organization in 2006. On May 6, 2017, an armed gunman entered Del Balso’s home in Laval and pointed a firearm at his relatives while demanding to know where he was. One of Del Balso’s relatives managed to send a text message warning him of what was going on. On April 25, 2019, the gunman pleaded guilty to several charges related to the home invasion, and he is currently serving a seven-year prison term.

Giuseppe (Joey Gator) Focarazzo, 46 — While Del Balso was under investigation in Project Colisée, investigators took note of how, during the summer of 2006, Focarazzo met with him at a bar in Laval that served as Del Balso’s hangout. They and two other men were secretly recorded as they discussed and handled firearms. In 2004, Focarazzo pleaded guilty to extortion and uttering treats and was fined $2,500. In 2019, he made headlines after a woman in Florida was charged with grand theft and using stolen credit cards to purchase goods. According to reports, the woman met Focarazzo at a hotel in Miami and he suddenly felt dizzy and fell asleep. When he woke up, the woman was gone, along with his $50,000 Rolex watch and credit cards. In January 2020, the charges against the woman were dropped.

Arsène (BM) Mompoint, 47 — Just weeks before the informant began testifying in the Viau/Dion case, Mompoint, a former street gang leader, was killed in Kanesatake on July 1. The day after the shooting, the Sûreté du Québec released a photo of a suspect who wore a bandana over his face, but no arrests have been made in the homicide investigation. The informant said that, during 2016, the Scoppa brothers wanted him to kill Mompoint and an associate nicknamed Jedi, but he chose instead to warn both men because he considered them to be friends.

Antonio (The Florist) Mucci, 67 — Mucci came to notoriety in the 1970s when he was convicted of the attempted murder of then-Le Devoir reporter Jean-Pierre Charbonneau. Mucci was sentenced to an eight-year prison term for shooting the reporter in 1973. Charbonneau was probing organized crime for the newspaper at the time. In 2010, Mucci was arrested as the Montreal police investigated people tied to the Mafia who were believed to be carrying firearms while the Rizzuto organization was under attack. The case was dropped five years later. In September, the informant testified he happened to spot Mucci at an Italian restaurant just hours after he killed the Falduto brothers. He told the jury he was with two other men at the time and that they talked him out of his plans to grab a few guns and kill Mucci on the spot.

Marco Pizzi, 51 — An attempt was made on Pizzi’s life on Aug. 8, 2016, during the period the informant said the Scoppas were eager to have people killed. A BMW rammed into Pizzi’s from behind while he was driving along Grande-Allée Ave. in Montreal. Two gunmen exited the BMW and tried to shoot Pizzi, but he escaped by running through a nearby park. Just weeks before the attempt on his life, Pizzi was released on bail in Project Clemenza. He had been charged in a cocaine trafficking case with Cuntrera and was also alleged to have been tied to $2.3 million used to finance five shipments of cocaine that were to be smuggled into Canada. The charges Pizzi faced in Project Clemenza were also dropped in 2017.

Calogero (Charlie) Renda, 54 — The son of Paolo Renda, another man revealed to be a leader in the Montreal Mafia during Project Colisée. Paolo Renda is believed to have been abducted in May 2010 near his home in northern Montreal. He has not been seen since. The informant said he approached Calogero Renda, near the end of 2016, and informed him that he was on the Scoppa brothers’ hit list. He also alleged that Calogero Renda was willing to pay up to $200,000 to have someone killed because the Sicilians believed the man was involved in the death of Lorenzo Giordano, another Rizzuto organization leader killed in 2016.

Vito Salvaggio — Many years ago, Salvaggio was tied to a series of apartments the Hells Angels used to collect and distribute millions of dollars they were making from the sale of drugs like cocaine. Surveillance on the apartments and computer records revealed he delivered $2 million to the biker gang. In 2002, he was sentenced to a four-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to charges filed against him in the investigation. More recently, police surveillance conducted during Project Magot, a Sûreté du Québec investigation into how the Hells Angels, Montreal Mafia and street gangs were working together, revealed that Salvaggio was often seen with alleged Mafia leaders like Stefano Sollecito.

Frédérick Silva, 41 — While Viau and Dion’s trial progressed before a jury at the Gouin courthouse in northern Montreal, Silva has been on trial before a judge at the Montreal courthouse. He is alleged to have killed three men, including one who had ties to the Hells Angels, between October and December 2018. At one point during the Project Magot investigation, Silva was spotted by police with Stefano Sollecito at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Nicola (Nick) Spagnolo, 45 — The informant testified Spagnolo was on the hit list and had been followed by people tied to the Scoppa brothers days before Spagnolo’s father, Vincenzo, a longtime friend of Vito Rizzuto, was killed by mistake in October 2016. The informant was very critical of the people he alleged were behind the error. By coincidence, Andrea Scoppa was secretly recorded as part of a cocaine trafficking investigation shortly after Spagnolo was killed. Scoppa’s driver asked him if he had anything to do with the slaying. Scoppa denied any involvement but appeared to take delight in Spagnolo’s death. He assumed it would put added pressure on Stefano Sollecito to react to the conflict. Scoppa was recorded saying: “The Godfather is up against a wall.”

Stefano Sollecito, 54, and his brother Mario, 50 — The informant testified the Scoppa brothers were not content with how he had killed Rocco Sollecito for them in Laval on May 27, 2016. They wanted two of his sons killed as well. In November 2015, when Sollecito was arrested in Project Magot, the Sûreté du Québec alleged that he and Vito Rizzuto’s son, Leonardo, were the heads of the Montreal Mafia at the time.

Gianpietro (JP) Tiberio, 48 — During the summer of 2015, Stefano Sollecito and Leonardo Rizzuto were secretly recorded while they discussed a problem that had arisen within Montreal’s underworld. Sollecito referred to Tiberio as “a liar” but appeared to be willing to let the man, who was identified during the Charbonneau Commission as an associate of the Rizzuto organization, run drug trafficking turf in Rivière-des-Prairies and Montreal North. Sollecito also said he wanted to see a man he referred to as Sal removed from the area. It appeared he was referring to Salvatore Scoppa.

Antonio Vanelli — In June 2, 2016, Montreal police homicide detectives showed up at Vanelli’s home near midnight to inform him his life was in danger. Hours earlier, someone shot 72-year-old Angelo D’Onofrio at the Hillside Café on Fleury St. in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. The victim was not known to police and, within hours, detectives theorized D’Onofrio was killed by accident and that Vanelli was the intended target. Vanelli frequented the café, but he was attending Rocco Sollecito’s funeral on the day D’Onofrio was killed. On March 27, 2019, a man was convicted of first-degree murder in D’Onofrio’s death.

pcherry@postmedia.com