A legal battle is mounting over documents seized last year from the home of Violette Trépanier, the Quebec Liberal Party’s former head of fundraising, and the Crown is seeking to have the public excluded from debates held in court on the issue. 

The battle is over documents seized from Trépanier’s home on December 12, 2016, as part of a UPAC investigation dubbed Operation Mâchurer. According to a motion filed by the prosecution (that had been heavily redacted for months until this week), UPAC is investigating a series of alleged crimes, including “bribery of judicial officers,” fraud on the government and breach of trust. Operation Mâchurer is an ongoing investigation into alleged illegal fundraising by the provincial Liberal party.

While the matter has been before before the courts in Montreal for months, it had gone largely unnoticed. Efforts had been made to keep it under wraps, including the exclusion of Trépanier’s name from a motion filed earlier this year. 

Trépanier, the head of provincial Liberal Party fundraising from 2001 to 2012, is claiming that some of the documents seized from her home should remain sealed because, in her opinion, they are protected by attorney-client privilege. The documents were contained in a “brown leather box.” According to an itemized list of its contents, the documents touch on the Bastarache Commission (a public inquiry held years ago into how candidates were nominated as judges in Quebec) and the Charbonneau Commission, the public inquiry into the awarding of contracts to construction companies. Trépanier testified before the Charbonneau Commission in 2014. 

Another document in the leather box is described as an “explanation concerning illegal contribution.” 

A UPAC investigator took possession of the documents last year but, on Trépanier’s request, they were immediately sealed, which meant that the anti-corruption squad could not access them as part of their investigation until the issue was challenged in court. 

On Feb. 8, this year, Trépanier’s lawyer, Gerald Soulière, was allowed to consult the documents, and that is when the legal battle began. Soulière insisted that the documents should indeed be protected by attorney-client privilege and therefore should not be made available to the police. 

Even though Operation Mâchurer has been one of the worst-kept secrets in the province, prosecutors in the case have tried to keep the debate over whether attorney-client privilege applies under wraps for a variety of reasons that were revealed this week at the Montreal courthouse as part of a legal challenge mounted by the Montreal Gazette and other media. 

The prosecution claims the “social and criminal network of the suspects is still unknown” and “the nature of this investigation and the notoriety of the people targeted will bring increased media attention causing eventual pressure and prejudice to potential witnesses.” The prosecution also argues having the debate in public could harm the investigation because it would reveal the “investigative techniques” used by UPAC.

This story will be updated.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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The total number of homicides reported in Montreal in 2017 was the lowest since island-wide statistics began being recorded 46 years ago. 

Twenty-two homicides that occurred during the year were reported to the Montreal police. But two violent deaths that occurred in 2016 were added to the list compiled by the Montreal police in 2017 after investigators obtained evidence confirming both cases were homicides. This brought the total number to 24, continuing a trend indicating Montreal is becoming a more peaceful city. The record was set last year when 23 homicides were reported. The number reported in 2017 is still significantly lower than the average number of homicides reported over the previous decade: 32. 

Charges have been filed in at least 14 of the 24 cases, giving the Montreal police major crimes squad a 58-per-cent solution rate. Eight of the cases involved deaths in which the victim was in some way related to the suspect. At least three of the victims had clear ties to the Montreal Mafia, a reminder that an internal conflict within the organized crime group that began roughly seven years ago continues. 

Here is a look at the homicides investigated by the Montreal police in 2017:

Victim: Albert Arsenault

Accused: Glen Crossley

1. Albert Arsenault, 70 (Sept. 17, 2016): Arsenault died after he fell down a small set of stairs inside the Station 77 bar in LaSalle and injured his head. It was declared the first homicide of the year after Montreal police obtained a warrant to arrest Glen Crossley, 47, of Kirkland, who is accused of manslaughter in the case. He is alleged to have pushed the victim before he fell down the stairs. Crossley’s preliminary inquiry began in December and is scheduled to resume in January. 

2. Ali Awada, 28 (Jan. 13, 2017): Awada, a man with known ties to the Montreal Mafia, was gunned down in Montreal North near the corner of Sabrevois and des Récollets Sts. At the time of his death, Awada was facing charges in Project Clemenza, a lengthy RCMP investigation into the Montreal Mafia. He was believed to have kidnapped a man in March 2011, as part of an effort to collect on a $2 million drug debt. He was the son of Mohamed Awada, a 47-year-old man who also had ties to organized crime. The elder Awadi was murdered in Montreal in November 2012. No one has been arrested in either homicide.  

Killer: Eugenia Tofan Bunu

3. A newborn baby (July 12, 2016): Eugénia Tofan Bunu, 43, a resident of the Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, was charged, on Jan. 26, with the death of her newborn baby. Ambulance technicians called to Tofan Bunu’s home on Cumberland Ave. the previous summer had found the infant showing no signs of life. On Nov. 20, Tofan Bunu pleaded guilty to infanticide and Quebec Court Judge Linda Despots ordered that a pre-sentence report be prepared for a sentence hearing scheduled for February. 

Victim: Jocelyne Lizotte

Accused: Michel Cadotte

4. Jocelyne Lizotte, 60 (Feb. 20, 2017): Lizotte, a woman who was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, died at the Centre d’hebergement Émilie-Gamelin, a long-term care institution on Dufresne St. Her husband, Michel Cadotte, 56, was arrested at the centre and was charged with second-degree murder. In October, a Quebec Court judge determined there is enough evidence in the case to proceed with a trial. His case returns to court in January. 

Victim: Nicola Di Marco

5. Nicola Di Marco, 47 (March 18, 2017): A passerby discovered Di Marco’s body in the parking lot of an apartment building on M.B. Jodoin Ave. in Anjou. He had been shot to death. Di Marco was known to associate with members of the Montreal Mafia and once admitted in court that he was involved in a clandestine casino that had been set up in an office building in St-Léonard in partnership with Nick (The Ritz) Rizzuto, the elder son of the now-deceased Mafia leader Vito Rizzuto. But Di Marco’s alliances leaned more toward Giuseppe (Ponytail) De Vito, the leader of a Mafia clan that opposed the Rizzuto organization. No one has been arrested in this case. 

Victim: Gilles Carriere

6. Gilles Carrière, 35 (May 7, 2017): Carrière was killed in an arson fire set in an apartment on St-Louis St. in Lachine, near 6th Ave. Two men in their 20s were arrested after the fire, but they were released without being charged. His death is believed to be related to drug trafficking. 

Accused: Kenneth Oteng

7. Anthony St-Jean Lamothe, 24 (May 14, 2017): Sometime after closing time on May 14, a fight broke out among a group of people and St-Jean Lamothe was one of a few people who ended up being stabbed. He was taken to a hospital, but died soon after he arrived. Initially only one person — Kenneth Oteng 25, was charged in connection with the murder. But in October, two other men — Benjamin Gourd Morris and Jeremiah Owusu, both 20 — were also charged with first-degree murder. Witnesses in the preliminary inquiry in the case have begun testifying, and it is scheduled to continue in February. 

8. Donald Marsman, 49 (May 16, 2017): Police believe Marsman was stabbed near the Lionel-Groulx métro station. He was found lying in a pool of blood at St. Jacques St. and Greene Ave. No one has been arrested in this case.  

Victim: Francois Mendes Campeau

Accused: Aimen Adnane

Accused: Luc Armand Motty

9. François Mendes Campeau, 23 (May 23, 2017): The victim was stabbed just before midnight while he was being mugged on Ste-Catherine St. W., near Crescent St. Two men — Aimen Adnane, 23, of Montreal, and Luc Armand Motty, 27, of LaSalle — were charged with second-degree murder and armed robbery two days after the victim died. The preliminary inquiry in this case begins in May. 

Victim: Daniel Armando Somoza-Gildea

Suspect: Frederick Silva

10. Daniel Armando Somoza-Gildea, 28 (May 24, 2017): The victim, a Concordia University student, was shot after an argument between two groups of men that started inside the Cabaret Les Amazones in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce carried on to the strip bar’s parking lot. The Montreal police have since obtained a warrant to arrest Frédérick Silva, 37, a career criminal who is also a suspect in the Feb. 21 attempted murder of Salvatore Scoppa, the brother of Andrea Scoppa, the alleged leader of a Calabrian clan that is part of the Montreal Mafia. Silva has yet to be arrested in either case.

11. Mustapha Danach, 30 (May 26, 2017): The victim’s body was found inside his home on Roi-René Blvd. in Anjou and police later determined he had been shot. Sixteen days before his body was found, Danach had appeared before a judge at the Montreal courthouse in a case where he was charged in 2014 with two counts of drug trafficking and possession of a prohibited firearm. No one has been arrested in connection with this homicide. 

12. A 22-year-old man (July 7, 2017): The victim was stabbed at the Achille-Fortier Park in Pointe-aux-Trembles near René-Lévesque St. and 36th Ave. He was taken to a hospital but died the following day. The person charged in connection with the homicide is a minor whose name cannot be published and appears to have been a relative of the victim.

13. A 29-year-old man (July 16, 2017): The victim was attending a wedding reception in St-Léonard when he was shot at around 1:30 a.m. outside the reception hall on Provencher Blvd., near Denis-Papin St. At the time, the Montreal police said the man was part of the celebrations that had been going on inside. No one has been arrested in connection with this homicide. 

Accused: Sofiane Ghazi

14. “Bebé Ghazi” (July 24, 2017): In a highly unusual case, Sofiane Ghazi, 37, is charged with the first-degree murder of his unborn child by stabbing his wife while she was eight months pregnant. The unborn child had yet to be named so was assigned the name Bebé Ghazi on the charge sheet filed against Ghazi, who is also charged with the attempted murder of his wife. The case returns to court in January.

15. Antonio De Blasio, 45 (Aug. 16, 2017): The victim was a man with known ties to the Montreal Mafia. In 2013, he was observed by police while meeting with alleged Montreal Mafia leader Stefano Sollecito and Dany Sprinces Cadet, an alleged street gang leader, and he reportedly has close ties to a few known Mafia figures. He was shot, reportedly after having picked up his son from a football practice in St-Léonard. No one has been arrested in this case. 

16. Valery Belange, 31 (Aug. 29, 2017): A month before he was killed, Belange pleaded guilty to two drug trafficking charges at the Montreal courthouse. He was scheduled to have a sentence hearing in September, but Belange was fatally shot in the hallway at the entrance of the apartment building where he resided, on Lausanne Ave. near Fleury St. E. No one has been arrested in this case.  

Victim: Gerry Thibert-Deschenes (a.k.a. Sisi Thibert)

Accused: Jean Edens Lindor

17. Gerry Thibert-Deschenes, a.k.a. Sisi Thibert, 26 (Sept. 18, 2017): A resident of an apartment building on Mullins St. in Pointe-St-Charles discovered Thibert-Deschenes’s body early in the morning. A relative of the victim later told reporters that Thibert-Deschenes was a transgender sex trade worker known as Sisi Thibert. The Montreal police investigation focused on a man who was recorded by a security camera descending a stairway in the apartment building shortly after the victim is believed to have been fatally stabbed. Days after the video was released to the public, the suspect in the case, Jean Edens Lindor, 24, was arrested in Scarborough, Ont. Lindor is charged with second-degree murder. 

18. Richard Dubuc, 62 (Oct. 5, 2017): Robert Dubuc, 64, is charged with the second-degree murder of his younger brother Richard. According to the Journal de Montréal, the accused had been looking after his younger brother, who suffered from a mental health problem, for years. On Oct. 5, a fight broke out in their apartment on Leger Blvd., in Montreal North, and when police arrived they found Richard had suffered a serious injury to his head. He died hours after being taken to a hospital. Robert Dubuc’s case returns to court in January. 

19. Claude Fleury, 39 (Oct. 27, 2017): At around 10:30 p.m. that Friday night, Fleury was stabbed near the intersection of Jeanne-D’Arc Ave. and Ste-Catherine St. E. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and died shortly after he arrived. At the time, the Montreal police said they believed the homicide was drug-related and possibly the result of a drug deal that went bad. According to court records, just four months earlier, Fleury finished serving a four-month prison term he had received for a series of offences, including drug possession. No one has been arrested in connection with Fleury’s death.

Victim: Vincent Lamer

20. Vincent Lamer, 48 (Nov. 3, 2017): On March 15, 2000, Lamer became a member of the Rockers, a puppet gang that served the Hells Angels well during Quebec’s biker gang war, a conflict that ran between 1994 and 2002 and resulted in the deaths of more than 160 people. In 2002, he graduated to the Hells Angels by becoming a prospect of the gang’s now-defunct Nomads chapter. But for reasons unknown, he quit the gang near the end of 2002. He once joked with a police officer that while the cops had two dozen photos of him on file he had yet to see a good one published in a newspaper. In 2002, he was sentenced to a 10-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to a series of charges related to the conflict. He was gunned down in Rivière-des-Prairies, reportedly close to his workplace. No one has been arrested in this case.

21. Abdel Hakim Fleury, 21 (Nov. 19, 2017): Montreal police officers responding to a call about an argument in an apartment in Rosemont found Fleury inside wounded by at least one gunshot. He was taken to a hospital where he died a short while later. His stepfather, Gilles Marion, 75, was arrested at the scene and was charged with first-degree murder. His case returns to court in January. 

22/23. Diane Champagne and Paulette Robidoux (Dec. 3, 2017): Montreal police officers responding to calls reporting a violent argument in an apartment on Souligny Ave. in the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough found two women who had been stabbed. One of the victims, Diane Champagne, was declared dead at the scene, while an older woman, Paulette Robidoux, died after being taken to a hospital. Christian Pepin, 35, was arrested at the scene and charged with killing his mother (Champagne) and grandmother (Robidoux). The case returns to court in January. 

Victim: Karine Taillefer

Accused: Richard Bernard Dufresne

24. Karine Taillefer, 37 (sometime between Sept. 29 and Oct. 21, 2017): Initially, the Montreal police theorized Taillefer, who was originally from the Gatineau region, had died of a drug overdose. Her body was found in a small vacant lot behind a former city of Montreal library on Beaudry St. and Taillefer had a lengthy criminal record that included convictions for drug possession. Richard Bernard Dufresne, a resident of Beaudry St. was first charged with committing an indignity on a human body. But on Dec. 18, he was also accused of manslaughter in Taillefer’s death. His case returns to court in February. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

A man with ties to the Montreal Mafia is to be sentenced this month in California for his role in a fraudulent telemarketing ring that bilked elderly people of their savings through false promises of lottery winnings.

Alberino (Rino) Magi, 50, entered a plea agreement last month is expected to learn early next week how long of a prison sentence a U.S. prosecutor will request.

Magi agreed to plead guilty to one conspiracy charge in a case that began in 2006 when the RCMP broke up a telemarketing ring based in Montreal and arrested 39 people. 

At the time, the RCMP alleged the ring made between $8 million and $13 million over a three-year period.

Police said the telemarketers called 500 people a week, urging elderly and vulnerable people to send significant sums of money to collect their lottery winnings. In some cases, victims sent tens of thousands of dollars through wire transfers. 

According to court documents, police had firm evidence that 165 victims in Canada and the U.S. lost more than $2 million in the scheme.

In 2011, Montreal resident John Bellini, 53, was sentenced to an 87-month prison term as the ringleader. He was returned to Canada in 2015. 

Magi is described in court documents as a longtime friend of Salvatore Scoppa, 47, the brother of Andrea Scoppa, 53, the alleged leader of a Calabrian clan within the Montreal Mafia.

Magi was among six men who lost a lengthy court battle last year in their efforts to avoid being extradited to the U.S. to face charges in the same U.S. District Court in California where Bellini was sentenced in 2011.

Based on Magi’s plea agreement, the prosecution appears prepared to request a sentence of between 12 and 24 months. Sentencing is set for Jan. 16.

Magi is the brother of real-estate developer Tony Magi, 58, the one-time partner of Nick Rizzuto in a land-development project. Rizzuto, the eldest son of late Mafia leader Vito Rizzuto, was killed in 2009 near Magi’s former offices on Upper Lachine Rd. in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

Kevin Power, another Montreal-area man who was extradited to the U.S. as part of the same case, is to have a sentencing hearing on Friday.

In a letter to Judge James Otero, Power wrote he became involved in the telemarketing ring because he owed Bellini money. The two had attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings but, Power wrote, he continued drinking to numb himself as he went about defrauding the elderly. 

“I was ashamed of what I was doing and I kept doing it,” Power wrote. “I drank in order to make calls, and drank more to forget them.

“I was glad in December 2006, when it all came to an end,” he added, referring to the arrests. “It was a relief not to have to make those calls anymore.”  

Paul Ifejeh, another of the six men extradited last year, is to be sentenced in March.

The remaining three — Van Wade Bedford, Mark Dash and Vijayakumar Ramakrishnan — have been sentenced to prison terms ranging between 12 months and three years. 

Ramakrishnan, 39, a resident of Dorval, ran a Western Union counter on Upper Lachine Rd. where victims would send their money. The counter was based out of a convenience store one block from where Tony Magi’s former company, FTM Construction, was based.

According to court documents, police had evidence Ramakrishnan and Bellini did business together from October to December 2006 and “was fully aware of his illegal activities and received commissions ranging from 25 per cent to 40 per cent.” 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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A man who has made a career of pulling off heists for four decades will remain behind bars until at least next week on charges of stealing works of art from three Montreal galleries as well as the bust of a famous French explorer from Lachine city hall. 

Robert Huet, 63, was calm as he appeared before a Quebec Court judge at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday while his lawyer, Olivier Cusson, asked that his client’s bail hearing be delayed. It was the fifth time since his arrest, early in December, that Huet has agreed to push back a court hearing that could potentially produce his release. His case returns to court next week but only for a formality hearing. 

Huet was arrested just two days after the Montreal police issued a release on Dec. 2, seeking help from the public to identify two men whose images were captured by security cameras during thefts of artwork from galleries in downtown Montreal and from Lachine’s city hall. In the latter case, police believe at least two men walked into the municipal building and left with a bust of French explorer René Robert Cavelier de LaSalle that was on public display. 

On May 23, this painting worth $18,000 was stolen from a gallery on Sherbrooke St. in Montreal. The painting, Maison en hiver, is by Quebec painter Marc-Aurèle Fortin. It’s an oil painting in a frame sculpted with gold leaves and measures eight by 10 inches.

The bust, estimated to be worth more than $10,000, was reportedly recovered from Huet’s home, an apartment on Rielle St. in Verdun, on Dec.4, the same day he was arrested. Michel Blais, 29, a resident of the Sud-Ouest borough, was also arrested and charged, on Dec. 4, with one count of theft in connection with the Lachine city-hall theft. Blais was released and his case returns to court on Friday. 

This work, Atlantide by Alfred Pellan, was among several pieces of art reported stolen.

Huet currently faces eight charges in all at the Montreal courthouse including the theft of a painting by Quebec artist Alfred Pellan, titled Atlantide, that was stolen from the Galerie Heffel on Sherbrooke St. W. on Oct. 16. He is also charged with stealing a painting by Marc-Aurèle Fortin, titled Maison en Hiver, from the Galerie d’art Cosner on de Maisonneuve Blvd. on May 23, as well as a metal sculpture by Jacques Huet from the Contemporary Art Gallery on Crescent St. on Oct. 28.

The Montreal police estimated the combined value of the two paintings, the bust and the sculpture at more than $50,000. But an updated charge sheet filed in Huet’s case on Dec. 14 alleges he has not limited himself to the finer things in life. He is alleged to have stolen “diverse objects” from Walmart, Canadian Tire and La Cordée, all on the same day he was arrested. He is also currently charged, at the Laval courthouse, in connection with a theft in that city on Sept. 9. 

Huet’s lengthy criminal record dates back to 1978 when he pleaded guilty to a theft in Montreal. In January 2012, he was arrested in connection with a break-in at a jewelry store in Knowlton, a case that dragged on for four years until a stay of proceedings was granted on Dec. 7, 2016. 

In 2004, Huet was sentenced to a prison term of 35 months after he pleaded guilty to more than two dozen break-ins at large hardware and grocery stores in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. Huet and a pair of accomplices used the same strategy in what police estimated were more than 30 similar robberies in the three provinces: one would distract a store manager while another would make off with the store’s safe. 

Huet’s longest sentence was delivered in 1988, when a District Court judge in Ontario sentenced him to an 11-year prison term for his role in a violent armed robbery of a jewelry store on Bloor St. in Toronto in 1987. Three men were involved in the $1-million heist of expensive watches, during which a police officer was disarmed and beaten with his own handgun. During his trial, Huet was alleged to have entered the store before the robbery and identified which display cases should be targeted. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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• Montreal police seek public help in identifying art thieves

A man who was arrested at Montreal city hall during a recent council meeting has been ordered to appear in court later this month on a charge alleging he criminally harassed Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough Mayor Sue Montgomery for several weeks before and after she was elected to the position. 

The criminal charge was filed at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday. It alleges that Robert Michael Edgar (who goes by the name Robin Edgar), 58, acted in a way causing Montgomery “to reasonably fear for her safety or the safety of anyone known to her.” The same charge alleges he harassed Montgomery between Oct. 17 and Dec. 12, last year. Montgomery, a former reporter with the Montreal Gazette, was elected as borough mayor in the Nov. 5 vote. 

The charge was filed under a section of the Criminal Code that is punishable by a summary conviction, which carries a maximum sentence of six months. 

After Edgar was arrested at city hall, on Dec. 11, he was released on a promise to appear at the Montreal courthouse on Jan. 19. In order to be released he also agreed to not contact Montgomery or to be near Montreal city hall or the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough hall. 

According to an article published by La Presse last month, Edgar, a resident of the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, was placed in handcuffs by police officers responsible for the security of elected officials after he entered his name on a list through which citizens can ask questions at council meetings. Edgar, who had been previously warned by the Montreal Gazette about posting defamatory material about Montgomery, reportedly confronted and filmed her often during the election campaign. Montgomery told La Presse that she decided to file a complaint after spotting Edgar as she was leaving her home one day early in December.

On Wednesday, Montgomery told the Montreal Gazette that her history with Edgar dates back much further than the municipal election. 

“It’s been 15 years and it has to stop,” she wrote in an email exchange.

During the public questions portion of the Nov. 27 city council meeting, two weeks before his arrest, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante warned Edgar that what he was doing was harassment and said “it has to stop.” 

In 2008, Edgar agreed to follow court-imposed conditions set out in a peace bond requested by the Unitarian Church, which accused him of harassment. The conditions were imposed over a 12-month period. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

Jean Audette, the former deputy director of the Sûreté du Québec on trial on charges alleging he used a secret fund to hide payments made to a consultant who was barred from working for the provincial government, will learn later this month whether the Crown has proven his actions were criminal. 

One of the final stages in Audette’s lengthy trial came to an end at the Montreal courthouse on Thursday as lawyers on both sides made their closing arguments before Quebec Court Judge Thierry Nadon. Audette, 57, was charged in the case in 2014 and Nadon began hearing evidence from witnesses on March 7, 2016. The trial continued on over the course of a least 40 non-consecutive court dates since then and two former SQ director-generals — Richard Deschênes and Mario Laprise — were called as witnesses. 

Audette, who worked directly under Deschênes at the time of the alleged crimes, is charged with fraud, breach of trust, theft, and use of a forged document. When the closing arguments ended on Thursday, Nadon announced he expects to deliver his decision on the four counts on Jan. 29. 

The entire case is based on how the SQ used its Special Operations Fund, which is supposed to be used to pay for the services and expenses of informants in organized crime investigations, to pay Denis Depelteau, a consultant who had been involved in negotiations between SQ management and the Association des policières et policiers provinciaux du Québec (APPQ), the union that represents more than 5,000 people who work for the provincial police, long before the alleged crimes took place. During the trial, Depelteau’s services were described as crucial to SQ management in the negotiations because of his experience. In 2011, Depelteau was in trouble with Revenu Québec for non-payment of taxes and was therefore disqualified from working for the provincial government. The Crown alleges Audette authorized the use of the secret fund to continue paying Depelteau.

By using the secret fund, prosecutor Sonia Mastro Matteo argued on Thursday, Audette was able to sidestep the checks and balances normally used to ensure taxpayer money is being spent properly. 

“If this was Hydro-Québec (in the same situation), what would they have done? They don’t have a secret discretionary fund,” Mastro Matteo said while making her closing arguments. She also argued that even if Audette did not know that what he was doing was wrong, he was wilfully blind because he ignored at least “three alarm bells” that should have caused him to ask questions while a total of $233,000 was paid to Depelteau through the fund.

Defence lawyer Ariane Bergeron-St-Onge argued the rules that governed the secret fund were very broad and open to interpretation. A long exchange between the judge and the defence attorney on Thursday focused on the wording of one directive that stated the fund could be used “to support” criminal investigations. Part of the defence’s stance is that the SQ was in urgent need of Depelteau’s services when Deschênes asked Audette to use the fund to continue paying Depelteau.  

“What is important here is that Mr. Depelteau wasn’t working on his own initiative. He was working on the request of the director-general, Mr. Deschênes,” Bergeron St-Onge said. 

Depelteau was charged with crimes as part of the same investigation. On Dec. 12, 2014, he pleaded guilty to forgery and breach of trust and was sentenced to a 15-month conditional sentence he was able serve in the community.

Deschênes, 58, testified at Audette’s trial as a defence witness. He and two other SQ officers who worked under him, Steven Chabot, 59, and Alfred Tremblay, 65, are also charged with using the fund improperly. Their criminal trial is scheduled to resume on Monday. All three are charged with fraud, theft and breach of trust. They are alleged to have used the secret fund to pay Chabot more than $167,000 and Tremblay more than $79,000 just before they retired. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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• Police officer's visit to SQ's finance office sparked fraud investigation

Sean Magna appears to be an accomplished actor. 

And it is his alleged repeat performances over a recent seven-month period that have landed him behind bars again. 

Magna, 36, a sometime resident of the Sud-Ouest borough, awaits a bail hearing at the Montreal courthouse in a case in which he is alleged to have tricked the employees of dozens of cafés and restaurants in the Montreal area while posing as a delivery man. 

According to Montreal police, Magna is a suspect in 70 fraud cases in which someone pretended to deliver coffee to eateries and insisted on being paid in cash. If employees asked questions, the fraudster would use his own phone to pretend to call the restaurant’s manager. That is where acting talents came in. The man who carried out the recent frauds pulled off performances so convincing, the employees would pay him on the spot. The fraudster also appeared to have done his research: in many cases he knew the name of the manager of the establishment being targeted. 

In September, Montreal police released photos of Magna while seeking the public’s help in identifying the suspect in almost 30 cases reported by restaurants in Plateau Mont-Royal and downtown.

On Dec. 5, the police had enough evidence to obtain a warrant for Magna’s arrest. The sole count laid out in the warrant filed at the Montreal courthouse alleged that between May 1 and Nov. 30, 2017, Magna had “defrauded diverse business people and the public in general.” When Magna was arrested on Dec. 14, police alleged the number of cases had more than doubled.

Magna remains detained while he awaits a bail hearing scheduled for Jan. 23. 

If the accusations are proved in court, the first three months of Magna’s alleged crime spree occurred while he was out on a conditional release and still serving a seven-year prison term he amassed over the past decade while treating the federal penitentiary system like a revolving door. According to Parole Board of Canada records, what started as an 18-month sentence in March 2007, when Magna was convicted for theft and fraud, ballooned to the seven-year term that expired on Aug. 4, 2017.

He reached his statutory release date on that sentence on Feb. 2, despite having been a considerable headache for Correctional Service Canada for years. Between 2011 and 2016, conditional releases granted to Magna were revoked three times because, as he eventually admitted to the parole board, he dislikes rules and “was tired of complying with Correctional Service Canada’s conditions.” 

A written summary of a decision made by the parole board on July 27, 2009 reveals he first violated a conditional release by committing the same type of fraud he is accused of in the current case. 

“You always had the same modus operandi. You were (posing) as a fake deliveryman (to) cafés and restaurants. You had forged papers and pretended to speak with the boss in front of the employees. You always got the money you wanted. You were acting alone. There was no one on the phone when you were calling. You were doing that to (pretend),” wrote the author of the 2009 parole board decision. 

Subsequent parole board decisions detailed how Magna admitted to having pulled off his scheme 43 times, between November 2007 and March 2009, and estimated he made $30,000 to $40,000. He said he did this to feed a serious addiction to gambling. 

That addiction is cited in Magna’s parole records as the sole motivating factor behind his past crimes. In 2016, when the parole board revoked his release for the third time, Magna told his parole officers he decided not to report to a halfway house he had been assigned to because he figured he could make a living off the grid through undeclared jobs and by playing poker.

A previous parole decision noted that Magna’s addiction to playing card games with other inmates caused him to accumulate so much debt, he had to be transferred to another penitentiary. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

A Montreal resident was recently sentenced to a five-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges filed as part of a police investigation into fentanyl dealers. The investigation was launched after a person fatally overdosed on the drug this summer. 

According to a statement issued by the Montreal police on Friday, Alain Julien was sentenced to a five-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to being in possession of and trafficking in fentanyl, a drug considered to be much more powerful than heroin. Court records indicate Julien, 31, received the sentence on Dec. 20 after pleading guilty to six charges at the Montreal courthouse. The charges were mostly based on drugs seized by the police when they carried out search warrants Sept. 1. With time served factored into his sentence, he was left with a 54-month prison term. 

The investigation began when Montreal police received tips after a person suffered a fatal overdose while at a bar in Plateau Mont-Royal on Aug. 7. The person was found unconscious inside the bar’s bathroom. Police officers and ambulance technicians made several efforts to reanimate the person, without success. 

At least 17 people died of overdoses in Montreal and Laval during the summer. In most cases, fentanyl, a powerful painkiller that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, was combined with other drugs including cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines.

Seven people were arrested, but Julien was only charged with one accomplice in his case. On Sept. 21, co-accused Yann Bouthillette, 33, of Montreal, pleaded guilty to four drug trafficking charges. He and Julien were alleged to have sold drugs together while they were under investigation between Aug. 24 and Sept. 1. Bouthillette is scheduled to have a sentence hearing later this month. 

Bouthillette has a lengthy criminal record that includes a conviction in 2004 for assaulting a man using the butt of a gun. The victim had insulted Bouthillette’s girlfriend. Bouthillete was sentenced to a prison term of more than two years and was released from a penitentiary in 2006. According to a decision made by the Parole Board of Canada in August 2007, he was quickly returned behind bars after he failed to report to a halfway house and was caught by police in the middle of a drug transaction. He threatened the police officers who arrested him and was found to be carrying a knife. While serving that sentence, Bouthillette was transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary because Correctional Service Canada suspected he was involved in drug trafficking among inmates. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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A Quebec Court judge is expected to decide on Tuesday whether she agrees a 13-year sentence is appropriate punishment for a Côte-des-Neiges resident who killed his best friend during an alcohol- and drug-fuelled game of Russian roulette. 

Judge Julie Riendeau was actually prepared to render a decision on Toru Syed’s sentence for manslaughter in October, but held off based on a request from defence lawyer Christina Nedelcu, who requested the delay for humanitarian reasons. Nedelcu argued that by delaying the sentencing to a date after the Christmas holidays, Syed, 30, would be able to hold his youngest child for only the second time since he was arrested on Aug. 19, 2011.

The child was born after Syed’s arrest, and Nedelcu said the Montreal Detention Centre, where Syed is being held, has a special program where detainees can have contact visits with family during the holidays. Nedelcu said that if Syed was sentenced back in October he would be put through a transfer process to a federal penitentiary that would prevent him from seeing his family for months. 

During the sentencing hearing in October, prosecutor Louis Bouthillier asked Riendeau to sentence Syed immediately. 

“(Family visits) are what he says is the real reason. But you have evidence that he has access to drugs while he was (detained),” Bouthillier said, speculating that Syed has delayed his sentencing since 2016 so he could sell drugs at a provincial detention centre. “My position is that you should sentence Mr. Syed right away.

“If I’m not mistaken, the accused pleaded guilty to three different narcotics offences while incarcerated. That is not just bad luck. He has had access to not only narcotics but cellphones as well.”

Riendeau ruled in Syed’s favour but noted the delay in sentencing Syed, who pleaded guilty on June 15, 2016, was “sufficiently long.”

“The sentence should have been rendered before 2017,” the judge said. 

Despite disagreeing on when the sentence should have been delivered, Bouthillier and Nedelcu both recommended Syed be sentenced to a 13-year prison term and serve concurrent sentences for a variety of drugs found inside his home after the fatal shooting, including more than two kilograms of marijuana. Nedelcu calculated that Syed will have served the equivalent of more than nine years by the time he is sentenced. 

Syed was initially charged with first-degree murder in the death of his close friend, 20-year-old Rakib Ullah Mohammed. Syed and the victim were marijuana dealers. They were both arrested with significant amounts of marijuana in Brockville, Ont., a year before Mohammed was killed. 

On Aug. 15, 2011, Syed, the victim and another man were together in Syed’s apartment on Côte-des-Neiges Rd., near Ellendale Ave., when Syed loaded a few bullets into a gun. He placed the barrel of the gun against his head, but it did not go off. He pointed at Mohammed’s head, pulled the trigger and killed the victim. 

“I think that the best way to describe the way he acted is at least a reckless fashion. The evidence shows he put a few bullets in the gun and he fired it while knowing there was a possibility it would fire. And he put the firearm to the victim’s head,” Bouthillier said. “It was more or less Russian roulette, to use a common expression.” 

Five firearms and more than two kilograms of marijuana were found inside the apartment when the police searched it. Bouthillier also noted that Syed’s four other children were home when the incident occurred. 

“I can’t see a worse case of wanton disregard for the lives of others,” the prosecutor said. 

Bouthillier said Syed “was involved in the trafficking of drugs. That obviously must also be considered (into) the sentence, because the circumstances during which it happened dealt with the possession, obviously, of a firearm, and the consumption of drugs.”

Nedelcu characterized what happened as “more of an accident” while noting Syed was depressed on the day he shot his friend.

“The accused himself was (also pointing the gun) at himself,” she said. “It’s a very big tragedy because the accused had no intent of harming his friend — his best friend.” 

During the preliminary inquiry in the case, evidence heard by a different judge indicated Syed consumed alcohol and marijuana and made a series of rambling statements before he shot his friend. A witness testified that Syed also smashed a rock of crack and said that the drug had “f—ed up his life.” Just before the gun went off, Syed was also heard shouting: “Tell me who’s my enemy. Tell me who wants to destroy me.” 

pcherry@postmedia.com

A Côte-des-Neiges resident was sentenced on Tuesday to an overall 13-year prison term for having killed his best friend while they played a drug-fuelled game of Russian roulette.

The sentence delivered by Quebec Court Judge Julie Riendeau at the Montreal courthouse put an end to a case that had began in August 2011, when Toru Syed, 30, was first arrested for having killed his friend, 20-year-old Rakib Ullah Mohammed. Syed shot the victim after both had consumed drugs and alcohol inside Syed’s apartment on Côte-des-Neiges Rd. on Aug. 15, 2011. 

He was initially charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in 2016. Riendeau agreed with a joint recommendation on the sentence made by both sides in October. 

“The court can say that the joint submission of a global sentence of 13 years is reasonable, taking into account all circumstances,” Riendeau said, noting the maximum sentence for a manslaughter case when a firearm is used is life in prison. “Subjectively, the accused is fully responsible for his actions since no one forced him to consume drugs nor to be in possession of restricted or prohibited firearms at the same time.” 

Riendeau also said the joint recommendation takes into account the aggravating factor that Syed was in possession of a variety of drugs, including more than two kilograms of marijuana, when he killed his friend. Both men were involved in marijuana trafficking when the victim was killed. They both had been arrested in Brockville, Ont., while possessing large quantities of pot just months before Mohammed was killed. 

Every day that Syed has been detained while awaiting the outcome of his case has counted as a day-and-a-half against his overall sentence. Riendeau calculated his time served as being more than nine years and eight months, which means he is left with a little more than three years and three months to serve. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

Related

• Man who killed best friend during Russian roulette to be sentenced

A prosecutor in California has asked that a Montrealer with alleged ties to the Montreal Mafia serve an 18-month prison term for his brief role in a fraudulent telemarketing ring that bilked elderly people of their savings through false promises of lottery winnings.

Monica Tait, the lead prosecutor in a case that has seen several Montrealers end up serving prison terms, filed the request in a U.S. District Court on Monday, asking that Alberino (Rino) Magi, 50, serve 18 months behind bars. Magi — the brother of Montreal real-estate developer Antonio (Tony) Magi, 58 — has been detained since February 2017, when the Quebec Court of Appeal rejected his challenge of the order to have him and five other men extradited to the U.S. 

The case revealed that Alberino Magi has close ties to Salvatore Scoppa, the brother of Andrea Scoppa, the alleged leader of a clan within the Montreal Mafia. Magi’s brother, Tony, was developing a piece of real estate with Nick (The Ritz) Rizzuto, the son of now-deceased Mafia leader Vito Rizzuto, before the younger Rizzuto was killed in December 2009.

Nick Rizzuto was shot within shouting distance of a building on Upper Lachine Rd. in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce that used to house construction companies owned by both brothers. Tait’s recommendation for Alberino Magi’s sentence reveals, for the first time, that Magi used the building’s address at least twice while the fraudulent network was active. 

“Different investigative reports link Alberino Magi to a construction company situated (on) Upper Lachine Rd. in Montreal. This company, Construction Gescor Inc., is owned by the Magi family and lists Alberino Magi as an administrator, president and shareholder of the company,” Tait wrote in her request.

The Quebec business registry still lists Alberino Magi as its president, but the address has since changed. 

Tait notes that in November 2005, the address on Upper Lachine Rd. was used twice as a shipping address in the telemarketing scheme where elderly people were told they had won a lottery but had to send in large amounts of money before they could collect. Two victims were told to send $6,500 to the building on Upper Lachine Rd. 

Last year, Magi pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge filed in the case. He admitted to being involved in actually calling potential victims between Nov. 30, 2006 and Dec. 19, 2006, when the RCMP arrested 39 people who were involved in the scheme. The prosecution estimates that “58 victims lost a total of $286,230” during that three-week period. Overall, the police had firm evidence that 165 victims in Canada and the U.S. lost more than $2 million in the scheme.

“(Magi) was on the front lines of the fraudulent organization. He was a telemarketer who directly lied to victims to persuade them to part with their money. As the court well knows, the scheme preyed on the elderly and infirm, causing substantial financial and emotional harm to these elders,” the prosecutor noted in her submission. “The defendant is a well-educated man with an advanced degree. Instead of pursuing legitimate employment in the engineering or finance fields in which he was educated, he chose to commit the most egregious kind of telemarketing fraud.” 

Besides the 18-months prison term, Tait requested that Magi be ordered to pay “restitution in the amount of $286,230.” 

Magi’s lawyer is expected to request that he be sentenced to, at most, a 12-month prison term. 

Magi is scheduled to be sentenced early next week. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

Montreal resident Oswald Wyke will have to serve at least 12 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole in a case where he murdered a stranger who crashed his backyard party in Côte-des-Neiges three years ago. 

“Wyke committed the most serious offence under the Criminal Code, which is murder,” Superior Court Justice Claude Champagne wrote in his decision delivered at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday. “He acted in a cowardly manner, shooting his victim twice in the back.” 

Champagne listed the fact that Wyke, 29, shot Olvin Alfredo Paz, 29, in his lower back and in the back of his skull among the aggravating factors that persuaded him to set Wyke’s parole eligibility at 12 years instead of the minimum of 10 years. On Oct. 19, a jury found Wyke guilty of second-degree murder, a Criminal Code offence that comes with an automatic life sentence upon conviction. Parole eligibility can be set at anywhere between 10 and 25 years. Prosecutor Louis Bouthillier asked that Wyke’s eligibility be set at 13 years, while defence lawyer Sharon Sandiford asked for the minimum. 

Champagne decided there were only a couple of mitigating factors in Wyke’s case.

Oswald Wyke

“The evidence adduced at trial may show that Wyke was a helpful person, that he loves his children and that he was taking care, once in a while, of the kids of his friends. Also, the accused was only 25 years old at the time of the offence he committed. That’s all,” Champagne wrote in his decision. 

Other aggravating factors cited by Champagne included evidence that Wyke went into hiding after the shooing and “carried on drug sales while on the run after the offence. He had a lengthy criminal record for a person his age. And especially, he was on probation and under a prohibition from possessing any firearm when he shot Mr. Paz.” 

The motive behind the murder was not clear, but Paz was not invited to Wyke’s party and had a history of erratic behaviour. The Crown could not produce a witness who saw the actual shooting. But some witnesses testified they saw him trying to hide a gun after Paz was shot. 

The victim’s body was left near a restaurant, near the intersection of Victoria Ave. and Mackenzie St. and went ignored, by several people, before someone finally called the police. Police eventually found the original crime scene, but by then all of Wyke’s guests had left. The DNA of 12 people, including Wyke’s, were found on bottles left behind. Police used the evidence to wiretap Wyke’s phones and learned that he sent a text message to a friend stating that he had done something wrong. 

A 27-year-old woman is charged with being an accessory after the fact to Paz’s murder. Her case returns to court in February. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Potential jurors for a murder trial set to begin soon at the Montreal courthouse were asked a delicate question by lawyers on Wednesday.

The case involves Kwasi Alfred Benjamin, 32, who was charged in July 2015 with the murder of Nellie Angutiguluk, a 29-year-old Inuk woman originally from Nunavik. She was found dead on May 18, 2015, in Côte-des-Neiges. Benjamin is charged with second-degree murder. 

As jury selection began Wednesday, defence lawyer Paul Skolnik asked each potential juror a question before they were put through the standard vetting procedure. 

“Would your ability to judge the case based on the evidence and without prejudice or bias be affected by the fact the accused, Kwasi Alfred Benjamin, is black and the deceased, Nellie Angutiguluk, was Aboriginal?” Skolnik asked each potential juror. The first few people put through the process said without hesitation that race would not affect their ability to judge the case purely on the evidence. 

Kwasi Alfred Benjamin

Nellie Angutiguluk

Superior Court Justice Michael Stober, the presiding judge in the trial, assigned two people who were in the jury pool to decide whether they believed the others appeared to be impartial or not. If one of the two decided the potential juror might be partial, the person was excused. It took less than five minutes for the first juror to be chosen. 

The process where potential jurors are vetted for a potential bias is becoming more common at the Montreal courthouse. Stober asked the potential jurors to not be offended if their peers decided they appeared to be partial. 

“Don’t take this as a statement on your character or integrity. It is a normal part of jury trials,” Stober said. 

The judge wanted a total of 14 people selected to the jury, including two alternates who will be available in case any of the first 12 ask to be excused before the trial begins hearing evidence on Monday. By 4 p.m., eight members of the jury were selected.

pcherry@postmedia.com

A man currently serving an eight-year sentence for a series of armed robberies where he specifically targeted elderly people has seen his statutory release revoked after two residents of the apartment building where he was residing were robbed as well. 

In 2011, Ghyslain Bouchard, 60, received his current prison term after he admitted to having committed several armed robberies inside downtown residences for the elderly. In almost every case, he would enter an elderly person’s apartment under false pretences and threaten the victim at knifepoint while stealing whatever he could walk away with. 

In one case he walked into the common room at a residence and ordered several elderly people to hand over their money while threatening them with a knife. In 2010, he stole a woman’s wallet and she decided to go after him. When the woman grabbed his jacket, he reacted by slashing her hand with a knife. 

His current sentence (his sixth prison term of more than two years since 1997) is the result of his admission that he carried out 10 armed robberies in all and forcibly confined elderly people on at least nine occasions while carrying out those crimes. 

On Feb. 10, 2017, Bouchard reached the two-thirds mark of his sentence, which meant he automatically qualified for a statutory release. Almost all offenders serving time in federal penitentiaries qualify for such releases if they are not previously granted parole. The Parole Board of Canada was limited to imposing conditions on Bouchard’s release and ordered that he reside at a halfway house for at least six months. 

According to a decision made by the parole board earlier this week, Bouchard’s time at the halfway house passed by without incident and, in August, he was allowed to live on his own. A written summary of the decision describes how, less than three months later, he was returned to a penitentiary after residents of the apartment building he moved into became the victims of crimes that shared similarities to the armed robberies he admitted to in 2011. 

On Nov. 5, someone used a false pretence to gain entry to a first-floor apartment in a building on St-Antoine St. E. and stole a woman’s wallet. Later on that same day, a man broke into a third-floor apartment in the same building and used rope to tie a victim to his bed. The robber then used a knife to threaten the victim while demanding to know the PIN code for his bank card. When police arrived, they searched the surrounding neighbourhood and, according to the parole decision, found Bouchard “in front of a bar and very drunk.”

Police officers were able to confirm that Bouchard had been drinking inside the bar before they found him, a violation of his statutory release. But the parole board was also not impressed with how Bouchard has since been charged, at the Montreal courthouse, in connection with what happened at his apartment building on Nov. 5. He faces five charges in all, including two counts of extortion and forcible confinement. Two days after he was charged, Bouchard admitted there was no need for a bail hearing.

His next hearing in the new case is scheduled to be held on Jan. 29. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

One of the most influential organized crime figures in Quebec is scheduled to appear before the Parole Board of Canada on Friday to continue his demand that he no longer be required to reside at a halfway house. 

The board imposed the condition on Raymond Desfossés, 67, a leader in the West End Gang, on June 28 as he was about to reach his statutory release date. He is serving a combined 18-year sentence for cocaine smuggling and for having hired professional hit man Gerald Gallant, 67, to kill six people between 1980 and 2001. As part of a lengthy investigation dubbed Project Baladeur, Gallant also told the Sûreté du Québec that Desfossés hired him to kill Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher in 2000. The plan was called off because Gallant sensed Boucher was under intense police surveillance at the time.

Desfossés was originally charged with six counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. But he ultimately pleaded guilty to being part of a general conspiracy to commit murder. His sentence will expire in 2023. Several years after the failed plot to kill Boucher, Sylvain Boulanger, a former Hells Angel who turned informant, told the Sûreté du Québec that the biker gang was offering $100,000 to anyone willing to kill Desfossés.

“In your case, the parole board concludes that there exists within you an imposing potential for violence and that the level of the risk of reoffending violently is still there. You were the head of a criminal organization with a significant reach and you did not hesitate to use murder to reach your goals,” the parole board wrote in its decision last summer ordering Desfossés to reside at a halfway house until he shows signs of changing. 

The board made the decision even though Desfossés’s case-management team, the people who prepare an offender for a release, felt the condition wasn’t necessary and “would only provide us with a false sense of security.” Since then, Desfossés has pushed to have the condition lifted.

In November, the Parole Board of Canada’s Appeal Division delivered a decision ordering that Desfossés have a new release hearing “because it considers that the (parole) board failed in its duty to act fairly and did not produce sufficient written reasons (for the order to reside at a halfway house) and that it proceeded in an insufficient analysis of your risk.” 

Timeline

1975 — According to the book Gallant: Confessions d’un tueur à gages, Gerald Gallant, who went on to become a prolific hit man for organized crime groups, met Raymond Desfossés for the first time in 1975 at the Cowansville Institution, a federal penitentiary in the Eastern Townships. Gallant would later tell police: “Mr. Raymond Desfossés really impressed me. He controlled drug trafficking inside the penitentiary. He was a real big crime boss.”

Jan. 30, 1980 — Gallant kills Louis Desjardins in Port Cartier. After his arrest in 2006, Gallant revealed he killed Desjardins, a drug dealer, for Desfossés because the gangster was concerned Desjardins was an informant.

Feb. 16, 1984 — Gallant kills Marcel Lefrançois in Ste-Foy. In this case, Gallant said, Desfossés didn’t order the slaying but supplied a driver for the hit. 

May 28, 1990 — Gallant kills Salvatore Luzi in Lorraine. Luzi ran a strip bar in Montreal and, at the time, police suspected the motive involved money Allan (The Weasel) Ross (at the time the leader of the West End Gang) lost in the business. Gallant said Desfossés, who was close to Ross, gave him the contract to kill Luzi. 

March 18, 1991 — Gallant kills Richard McGurnaghan inside a tavern in Point St-Charles. Gallant told investigators Desfossés paid him $12,000 to kill the 42-year-old. 

March 1992 — Desfossés is arrested and detained in Montreal after authorities in the U.S. requested his extradition on several charges, including the May 1985 murder of David Singer, an associate of the West End Gang who was killed in Florida. Desfossés challenged the extradition for years but was eventually sent to the U.S. In May 1998, he entered a “no contest” plea to the murder charge and was sentenced to a 12-year prison term. His lawyer estimated Desfossés would be paroled within 14 months because of the time he spent behind bars fighting his extradition. 

July 7, 2000 — Gallant kills Robert Savard, a notorious loan shark tied to the Hells Angels, inside a restaurant in Montreal. Desfossés ordered the hit that turned into a disaster. Savard was having breakfast with another loan shark, former Quebec Nordique Normand Descôteaux, that morning and Gallant and his accomplice decided to keep firing toward the retired hockey player even though they had killed their primary target. Descôteaux used Hélène Brunet, a waitress, as a human shield to protect himself, but both gunmen kept firing. Brunet was seriously wounded in the shooting. 

May 30, 2001 — In a case of mistaken identity, Gallant kills Yvon Daigneault, the manager of a bar in Ste-Adele, and wounded Michel Paquette, another innocent victim of Gallant and his accomplice’s sloppiness. According to Gallant, the actual target was Claude Faber, a former associate of the West End Gang who owed Desfossés $250,000. But, the hit man claimed, Desfossés supplied his accomplice with the wrong licence plate number while providing instructions for the hit. Gallant said Desfossés still paid him $25,000 because the error came from his source. Another error made that day was that Gallant left his DNA on a beer bottle recovered by police at the crime scene. That mistake was key to the police launching Project Baladeur, the investigation that revealed Gallant killed 28 people in all. 

September 2004 — Desfossés is arrested along with more than two dozen other people in Project Calvette, an RCMP investigation that revealed he was the ringleader of a network that imported cocaine from South America to Quebec. In 2005, Desfossés pleaded guilty at the Montreal courthouse to his leading role in the network and was sentenced to an overall prison term of 13 years. 

Aug. 18, 2006 — Gallant makes his first appearance before a judge at the St-Jérôme courthouse where he is charged with Yvon Daigneault’s murder and the attempted murder of Michel Paquette. By then Gallant had already begun working with the Sûreté du Québec to help them investigate the other people involved in the 28 murders he committed. In 2009, Gallant pleaded guilty to the 28 murders and received a life sentence. 

March 17, 2009 — Desfossés and 10 other people who either ordered or took part in the 28 murders Gallant carried out learn that the hit man began supplying information to the SQ shortly after his arrest in 2006. On Feb. 20, 2014, Desfossés pleaded guilty to a general conspiracy to commit murder. His sentence for the conspiracy was combined with the sentence he received for cocaine smuggling.

pcherry@postmedia.com

Related

• Former hit man tied to West End Gang gets leave privileges

One of Quebec’s most notorious gangsters has succeeded in his efforts to have the Parole Board of Canada lift a condition that required him to reside at a halfway house for the past six months. 

“I am chained like a dog to a halfway house. So if someone wanted to kill me it is very easy for them to find me,” Raymond Desfossés, 67, said during a hearing Friday morning at a federal penitentiary in Laval. 

Desfossés was addressing a question put to him by Michel Lafrenière, the parole board member who presided over his hearing, as to how he would handle the possibility of someone seeking revenge for the crimes that led to his 18-year prison term. Lafrenière said it is the kind of stressful situation that could prompt a career criminal, like Desfossés, to use violence to protect himself. Such a situation could put public safety in jeopardy, Lafrenière said.

“That is a question I have asked myself often. I have had no sign of (someone seeking revenge) while I was incarcerated. Will someone go after me? It is possible. But I have had no sign of this,” Desfossés said. 

Raymond Desfossés was successful on Jan. 12, 2018 in his bid to have the Parole Board of Canada lift a condition that required him to reside at a halfway house for the past six months. Handout photo

He has good reason to be concerned because part of his sentence involves how he hired Gerald Gallant, 67, a hit man, to kill six of his rivals between 1980 and 2001. While he was initially charged with six counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, he was able to plead guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to commit murder. On Feb. 20, 2014, his sentence for the conspiracy was combined to one he was already serving and turned into an 18-year prison term.

Desfossés reached the two-thirds mark of the sentence, his statutory release date, last year and the parole board decided to impose the halfway house condition. He challenged the decision and the board’s appeal division agreed he wasn’t treated fairly and heard him out Friday. 

Gallant became a police informant following his arrest, in 2006, for a murder he carried out for Desfossés in Ste-Adèle. Gallant admitted to killing 28 people in all and told the police that Desfossés also hired him, in 2000, to kill then-Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher. Gallant called off the hit because he noticed Boucher appeared to be under constant police surveillance. Gallant told investigators that he and three other men were supposed to split $250,000 if they had carried out the contract successfully. 

“This is all hypothetical,” Desfossés said when asked a second time whether his life might be in danger. “I’d like to hear how someone else answers that question. It is not my intention to commit another crime. I am no longer thinking like that.” 

Desfossés was an influential leader in the West End Gang before he was arrested in September 2004 in Project Calvette, an investigation into his efforts to smuggle cocaine into Canada. Desfossés was serving a sentence for the crimes uncovered by Project Calvette when Gallant decided to work with the police and told investigators who ordered or helped him with the murders. 

Desfossés sided with The Alliance, a group of criminal organizations who opposed the Hells Angels during Quebec’s biker gang war, a conflict that ran between 1994 and 2002. Some of the murders he paid Gallant for were carried out within the context of that conflict, most notably the July 7, 2000, murder of Robert (Bob) Savard, a loan shark with close ties to the Hells Angels and Boucher. 

 “Listen, I didn’t walk to trouble. I ran to trouble,” Desfossés said while insisting he now realizes his actions are responsible for the time he has spent behind bars since the 1970s.

This prompted Lafrenière to ask Desfossés what advice he would give to a young inmate serving a first sentence at a penitentiary.

“(Crime) is not a good choice for a life,” Desfossés said. “Violence brings nothing good. If you can negotiate something, do it. You don’t get medals for what I did.”

While lifting the halfway house condition, Lafrenière took note of the fact that Desfossés performed volunteer work at a homeless shelter on René-Lévesque Blvd. E. and reported back to his halfway house in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve every night without incident for six months. A parole officer also mentioned that Desfossés took up tennis to keep himself busy when he wasn’t volunteering. During Friday’s hearing, he told Lafrenière that he often ran into people “from the milieu” at the halfway house, but reported every conversation to his parole officers. 

With Friday’s decision, Desfossés is now allowed to return to his home in Trois-Rivières, but is required to wear a GPS bracelet that will allow Correctional Service Canada to monitor his movements at all times. He is not allowed to leave the city limits of Trois Rivières without permission. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

The mastermind behind an armoured truck heist in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce that resulted in the death of a security guard more than two decades ago has been returned behind bars after he admitted to driving while impaired and assaulting a person after having caused an accident.

Thomas James, 54, is serving a life sentence for his leading role in the Nov. 22, 1994, robbery carried out inside a Provigo grocery store on Monkland Ave. while two guards working with the Secur armoured car company were transporting money to or from the store. Two of four men who took part in the robbery opened fire on the guards — Richard Lavallée and John Rosen — without warning. Lavallée, who was shot at close range in the back, died as a result of his injuries. Rosen survived despite having been shot in both of his arms. 

The grocery store was full of clients at the time. James and another man were parked outside in a getaway car and had placed explosives near the store that James was ready to detonate if the robbers were followed while the fled from the crime scene. The robbers made off with $120,000, but were arrested a year later after Claude Ranger, one of the shooters, was arrested for another crime and decided to become a prosecution witness. 

On March 7, 1997, a jury at the Montreal courthouse found James guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder. In 2016, he was granted day parole, but that release was revoked following a recent hearing before the Parole Board of Canada. According to a written summary of the decision, James had showed promise while residing at a halfway house but was arrested, in September, after he caused a car accident, assaulted a victim of the collision and fled before the police arrived. He was arrested a short while later and police determined he had been drinking that night. 

In December, he pleaded guilty to driving while impaired, assault and uttering threats. He was fined $1,600 and his driver’s license was revoked for a year. He was also sentence to 12 months of probation, but the more significant repercussion is what happened with his life sentence because of the parole violation. He was returned to a penitentiary and will have to wait at least a year before the parole board reviews his case again. 

“The board notes that you have committed crimes while on day parole. You put a citizen’s life at risk when you drove your car while intoxicated by alcohol, had a car accident and assaulted the victim of the car accident. You showed very poor social consciousness that night,” parole board member Jean-Claude Boyer wrote in his decision to revoke James’s day parole. “At the (parole) hearing, you expressed being sorry for committing crimes and explained that you were under (intense) pressure from your work, relationships and in a state of panic because your case-management team planned to recommend full parole in your case. You said you need more supervision and help for your substance abuse problem.” 

Ranger received a sentence similar to James’s. Kyle Bigelow, the other shooter in the armed robbery, was convicted of second-degree murder and received a life sentence. He served time behind bars in British Columbia before he was granted full parole in 2012. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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A man who was arrested as part of a police crackdown on a Hells Angels puppet gang while it was based in the West Island was sentenced to a two-year prison term on Monday after admitting he was in possession of the bulk of the drugs seized in the operation. 

Dean Madden, 54, of Wentworth Nord, appeared before Quebec Court Judge Joëlle Roy at the Montreal courthouse where he pleaded guilty to being in possession of two prohibited firearms, including a semi-automatic pistol, as well as 50 kilograms of hashish. The hashish was seized from Madden’s home in the Laurentians in March 2015 as part of an investigation that targeted members of the Devil’s Ghosts, a Hells Angels affiliate gang that had a clubhouse based in Pointe-Claire in 2015. 

Prosecutor Éric De Champlain told Roy that Madden was not a target of the investigation but that during surveillance on two men who were — David Castelli, 47, of St-Lazare, and David Manneh, 38, of Beaconsfield — police noticed that Madden took possession of a large box of what investigators assumed was hashish. When Madden and six other people were arrested in the investigation, the police announced they had seized 70 kilograms of hashish in all. 

Based on a joint recommendation from De Champlain and Madden’s lawyer, Roy agreed to sentence Madden to a prison term of two years less one day to be followed by three years of probation. Madden handed over a red gym bag to a special constable and was taken into custody. He had been granted bail a month after he was arrested in 2015. 

De Champlain then told Roy the Crown would withdraw similar charges that were filed against Madden’s 51-year-old wife in the same case. 

The prosecutor also announced that Madden’s guilty plea closed the books on the case involving the Devil’s Ghosts. The case made headlines in 2015 as it was one of the first signs the Hells Angels had returned to using affiliate clubs as a means to recruit new members since Quebec’s biker gang war, a conflict that ran between 1994 and 2002 and resulted in the deaths of more than 160 people. 

On June 16, Castelli, the alleged leader of the Devil’s Ghosts’ chapter based in Pointe-Claire, pleaded guilty to possession of a prohibited firearm and to possessing the same hashish that was found at Madden’s home. Castelli was sentenced to three years of probation and was fined $2,500. 

Manneh, who was described as a member of the Devil’s Ghosts during Castelli’s bail hearing in 2015, is currently serving a 30-month prison term he received on June 16 after he also pleaded guilty to being in possession of the 50 kilograms of hashish as well as a loaded firearm. 

Charges filed against a 43-year-old man who was alleged to be a member of the Devil’s Ghosts were withdrawn on June 22, 2016. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

Three weeks after he allegedly killed his girlfriend because she wasn’t paying her share of the rent, Kwasi Alfred Benjamin showed up at a memorial for Nellie Angutiguluk accompanied by a woman he introduced as his “new girlfriend.”

The chilling detail was part of the opening statement made by prosecutor Dennis Galiatsatos at the start of Benjamin’s second-degree murder trial at the Montreal courthouse on Monday. A jury composed of six men and six women is expected to hear evidence in the case during the next four weeks. 

Angutiguluk, 29, an Inuk woman originally from Nunavik, was killed in an apartment in Côte-des-Neiges at some point during the Victoria Day weekend in May 2015. Galiatsatos told the jury it will hear evidence that the couple argued throughout the long weekend over money. 

Witnesses will say they heard Benjamin, 32, accuse Angutiguluk of having stolen money from him. Sometime before the murder, a witness saw Benjamin push the accused to the ground in a parking lot. The witness will say that Benjamin said she wasn’t paying rent while living with him, Galiatsatos said. 

The prosecutor also told the jurors they will be shown video evidence, captured by a security camera, recorded inside a bar near Benjamin’s second-floor apartment on de Nancy St., where the couple appeared to argue at length shortly before she died. There is no audio to go with the footage, Galiatsatos said, but it will be clear that the accused and the victim were arguing based on things like their hand gestures.

Nellie Angutiguluk died May 18, 2015.

The couple left the bar on foot and, minutes later, the Montreal police received a 911 call reporting a woman was walking in the middle of a street. The officers who responded to the call found Benjamin and Angutiguluk together about to enter the apartment building on De Nancy St. Both appeared to be very inebriated, Galiatsatos said. 

At 3:30 a.m. on the Monday of the long weekend, a neighbour heard what sounded like a loud argument. The witness will testify he felt the floor vibrate after hearing Benjamin shout: “Where’s my money?” 

Benjamin went to work later that day, but based on Galiatsatos’s summary, the police could find no evidence that Angutiguluk left the apartment following the argument overheard by the neighbour. At 12:50 a.m. the following day, Benjamin called 911 from a pay phone on Jean Talon St. and reported that Angutiguluk was unconscious but was still breathing. When ambulance technicians arrived, they found Angutiguluk’s body naked, except for a pair of underwear, and could find no signs of life. She was declared dead after she was brought to a hospital. Witnesses will say her body was rigid and that she had probably died hours before Benjamin called 911.

Galiatsatos added that a pathologist will testify the victim died of “ligature strangulation” and that the expert witness will also explain what the term means. Galiatsatos noted that several different wires were seized from Benjamin’s apartment as part of the murder investigation.

The victim’s mother and the accused’s stepmother are expected to testify about what they knew of the couple’s relationship and things Benjamin said after Angutiguluk was killed. 

An employee at a community centre is also expected to testify that, three weeks after the murder, a memorial was held in Angutiguluk’s memory and that Benjamin attended it “with a woman he introduced as his new girlfriend.” 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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A Verdun resident was arrested by the Montreal police and charged during the weekend with threatening Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante by email. 

Claude Meilleur, 63, faces one charge of uttering a threat to “cause the death or bodily harm” to Plante. The alleged threat was made on Jan. 11. 

Montreal police spokesperson Constable Jean-Pierre Brabant confirmed that an arrest was made in connection with a threat made to the mayor and that a suspect was arrested and charged.

According to provincial court records, Meilleur has an extensive criminal record and was charged with a long series of offences in 2010 and 2009 when he resided in Laval. 

For example, on Jan. 20, 2010, he pleaded guilty at the Joliette courthouse to being in possession of an unauthorized firearm and was sentenced to pay a $200 fine. On July 9 in 2010, he pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to three years of probation. He also pleaded guilty to simple drug possession and was sentenced to serve a week in jail. 

Meilleur was detained throughout the weekend. He was granted a release on Monday during a brief hearing before Quebec Court Judge Manon Ouimet where he agreed to follow a series of conditions.  His case returns to court in March.