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Former hostage in Montreal Mafia dispute paroled in pot-smuggling case

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A Montreal man who was once held hostage for more than a month as part of a dispute that involved the highest levels of the Montreal Mafia has been granted parole on a lengthy sentence he received four years ago for smuggling cannabis into the U.S.

Nicola (Nick) Varacalli, 70, was returned to Canada on June 8 by U.S. authorities after his application for a transfer to continue serving the 10-year prison term he received in 2014 in a U.S. court was accepted. The transfer was very beneficial to Varacalli because of the significant difference in how Canada and the U.S. handle inmates serving time in their respective federal penitentiaries. In 1987, parole was abolished for almost all offenders serving time in American penitentiaries. Meanwhile, in Canada, offenders are eligible for a full release after they have served one-third of their sentence.

The difference meant that Varacalli became eligible for full parole the same day he arrived at a federal penitentiary somewhere in Quebec two months ago. The self-employed businessman, who had operated bakeries and restaurants in Montreal before he was extradited to the U.S. in October 2013, was granted a full release by the Parole Board of Canada following a hearing held on Monday.

The parole board attached two conditions to the release: that Varacalli supply his financial records to authorities based on a schedule set by a parole officer and that he not associate with criminals until the sentence expires. Before he was sentenced in a U.S. District Court in Plattsburgh, N.Y. in 2014, he was described by a prosecutor as having “played a key role in an international drug-smuggling organization designed to smuggle thousands of pounds of marijuana into the United States and generated millions of dollars in drug proceeds.”

On Dec. 13, 2013, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess cannabis with the intent to distribute. The conspiracy was alleged to have begun in 2005. On Halloween night that same year, Varacalli was kidnapped from his home in Ahuntsic by four men wearing costumes who grabbed him while he handed out candy to kids.

He eventually returned home more than a month later and refused to co-operate with the police. But several months later, details of what was behind the abduction emerged during a bail hearing held for Montreal Mafia leaders Nicolo (Zio Cola) Rizzuto and Francesco (Chit) Del Balso. Both men had been arrested in 2006 as part of Project Colisée, a major investigation into the Rizzuto organization and its associates.

Conversations secretly recorded by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit during Colisée revealed that Varacalli was kidnapped as part of a longstanding dispute between people tied to the Rizzuto organization and a group of cannabis smugglers based in the Eastern Townships. The conflict apparently involved a large quantity of cannabis that either disappeared or had gone rotten before it arrived at its destination. Summaries of some of the conversations revealed that in 2004 the dispute was over who would be on the hook for $800,000 (U.S.) for whatever had gone wrong.

Months later, on Aug. 26, 2005, Del Balso was recorded telling Giuseppe (Closure) Collapelle (a man who was later murdered in 2012) that “20 guys” were by then looking to collect $9 million. One factor that contributed to the problem was that Francesco Arcadi, a Montreal Mafia leader, refused to choose sides for months. At the time, Arcadi was the leader of the Rizzuto organization, but he also had close ties with the people based in the Eastern Townships. Arcadi was recorded a few times telling associates that he didn’t know who to believe while he was pressured to settle the conflict.

According to a written summary of the parole board’s decision, Varacalli became part of the conspiracy he is currently serving a sentence for in 2009 after a longtime friend approached him about investing in a project to export cannabis to the U.S. He said he initially agreed to invest $80,000 and planned to keep a distance from the actual smuggling operation but was drawn in deeper because he is bilingual and acted as a translator when his associates met with American traffickers.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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No jail time for getaway driver in home invasion at Mafia leader's residence

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A young man who acted as a getaway driver when someone stormed into the Laval home of a Montreal Mafia leader and threatened the mobster’s family at gunpoint will not have to serve jail time for his role in what transpired.

Quebec Court Judge Serge Cimon said on Thursday that sending 26-year-old David Cormier to a detention centre would negate the efforts he has made to get his life together since his arrest last year. Shortly before noon on May 6, 2017, a gunman entered the home of Francesco (Chit) Del Balso, 48, and pointed a gun at his wife and two sons while demanding to know where the mobster was. Del Balso was out running errands at the time and was on parole while serving a lengthy sentence for a series of crimes committed while he and five other men ran the Rizzuto organization between 2002 and 2006. Two of the other leaders — Lorenzo Giordano and Rocco Sollecito — were killed in Laval in 2016.

When the gunman realized Del Balso was not home, he dashed out of the house and jumped into a car waiting for him outside. Cormier was behind the wheel and a witness saw his Jetta make a U-turn before the gunman jumped into it. As the Jetta sped through a residential neighbourhood, it went through a stop sign. Someone called 911 and, within minutes, the Laval police located the Jetta. Cormier refused to stop when he spotted one of their cruisers in his rearview mirror. Over the course of two minutes, he led the police on a dangerous pursuit along Highway 440 with speeds sometimes reaching 160 kilometres per hour. The car finally came to a stop as Cormier tried to get onto Highway 13.

Cormier and the gunman were arrested and a dog that emerged from the back seat of the Jetta was fatally shot by a police officer. While Cormier was initially charged with offences related to what happened inside Del Balso’s home, he only pleaded guilty, on Feb. 8, to two counts involving the getaway: dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and operating a vehicle while pursued by police.

As part of a joint statement of facts presented to Cimon when Cormier pleaded guilty, he claimed he had no idea what was going to happen inside Del Balso’s home. He told authorities he befriended a man on Facebook and accepted his request to give him a lift so the man could pick up a car.

Cormier admitted his life was a mess when he was arrested and attributed his problems to abusing cannabis. He has since undergone therapy and is currently an apprentice learning a trade while holding down a job.

“Despite the events, you have made incredible efforts,” Cimon told Cormier after delivering a 12-month conditional sentence that will require Cormier to respect a curfew.

The conditional sentence will be followed by two years of probation. Cormier is not allowed to drive for a year and is required to reside at a fixed address while he serves the sentence. His defence lawyer, Pierre Gauthier, asked that the address remain under a court-ordered seal out of concern for Cormier’s safety.

The alleged gunman, Marc Laflamme Berthelot, 34, is charged with pointing a firearm at Del Balso’s wife and his two sons, assault, robbery and uttering threats. He is scheduled to have a trial in November.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Homicide victim was drug dealer who feared poverty of his youth

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The man gunned down Thursday night inside a car-repair shop in St-Léonard once told a parole officer he had opted for the life of a drug dealer as a means to escape the poverty he experienced as a child.

Guy Therrien, 53, was out on full parole when he was fatally shot, still serving a sentence for cocaine possession. The Montreal police discovered his body inside a garage belonging to a car and truck-repair company based in a building on Lafrenaie St. in the St-Léonard borough. A 23-year-old man was injured in the same shooting, which occurred just before 8:30 p.m. on Thursday. He is now in stable condition.

Several hours after Therrien was killed, at around 11 a.m. on Friday, members of a Montreal police SWAT team and major crimes squad investigators arrested a 44-year-old male suspect in Napierville. A police spokesperson he was expected to be questioned by homicide detectives on Friday.

At the same time that the arrest was made, Montreal police could still be seen working along a stretch of Lafrenaie St. marked off with police tape. A German shepherd sniffer dog was led around the building where Therrien was killed in an apparent search for evidence.

Therrien had run into problems while serving his sentence. He was involved in a few fights with other inmates and served time in isolation for having trafficked in contraband tobacco. But when he was released on full parole in May 2017, records describe him as having been open with his parole officers while on day parole and as someone who had learned how to avoid “placing yourself in situations that involve risk.”

At the time of his death, Therrien was still serving the 70-month sentence he received at the Montreal courthouse in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine for the purposes of trafficking. In June 2012, the Montreal police seized five kilograms of cocaine from his home along with more than $35,000 in cash. At the time, the Montreal police said Therrien’s arrest was part of an investigation of a drug trafficking network that involved members of various organized crime groups based in Montreal.

Decisions made by the Parole Board of Canada while he served the sentence suggest Therrien was not tied to a specific criminal organization but had associated with many known criminals. He served time during the 1990s for having killed a businessman he owed money to. He also had served time during the same decade for having set fire to his own residence in an effort to collect insurance money.

The parole board was informed that Therrien’s past crimes could be attributed to a fear of poverty. His father died when he was six, leaving his mother to raise eight children on her own.

“According to what is reported (in records filed to the parole board in 2016) you wanted to build a different future. Your ambition and your thirst for money drove you at an early age toward trades with big challenges and a lure toward quick and easy money,” read the summary of the parole board’s 2016 decisions.

That same thirst for quick and easy money saw Therrien be arrested in 2001, along with a small group of Colombian drug smugglers who were shipping large quantities of cannabis to the U.S. while smuggling cocaine into Canada. On March 13, 2002, he was sentenced to a four-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to five charges filed against him as part of the RCMP investigation.

The fatal shooting was the 17th homicide reported in Montreal in 2018. There were 15 homicides reported during the corresponding period in 2017.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Notorious West End Gang leader Allan (The Weasel) Ross has died

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Allan (The Weasel) Ross, one of the more notorious organized crime figures ever to emerge from Montreal, died of natural causes earlier this week while serving a life sentence in the United States.

An official with the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to the Montreal Gazette that Ross died on Tuesday at a medical centre in North Carolina that is part of the American federal prison system. He was 74 years old and had suffered from serious health problems, including diabetes, for years.

Ross had been at the medical centre a long time while serving the life sentence he received following his 1992 conviction in a major cocaine smuggling case. Ross continued trying to appeal the conviction that produced his sentence, which included no chance at parole. He filed several documents in federal court last year while arguing recent amendments in American sentencing guidelines merited a reduction in his life sentence.

“His original guideline range was life and his newly calculated term is also life,” a U.S. District Court judge wrote in a brief decision filed in February last year informing Ross that the amendments did not apply to him.

Ross took over control of Montreal’s West End Gang in 1984 following the murder of Frank (Dunie) Ryan, who was killed on Nov. 13 that same year.

Ryan’s death set off a chain of events that were so violent many in Quebec still remember them to this day. Among them, a television packed with 30 pounds of explosives was delivered Nov. 25, 1984 to a Montreal apartment where Paul April, the hit man believed to have been behind Ryan’s murder, was staying. The blast killed April and three other men and knocked a massive hole in the building on de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.

According to court documents filed in Ross’s case in the U.S., Ross ordered April’s death and paid for the hit by erasing huge cocaine debts that members of the now-defunct Laval chapter of the Hells Angels owed to the West End Gang.

Those debts played a role in another notoriously violent event that came to be known as the Lennoxville Purge. The gang invited five members of the Laval chapter to the Hells Angels bunker in Sherbrooke, in 1985, for what the victims were told would be a party. The five men were shot dead in an ambush. The Laval chapter’s debts to Ryan and the West End Gang created headaches for other Hells Angels who wanted to be taken seriously among Montreal’s organized crime circles.

Before Ryan was murdered, the West End Gang’s involvement in drug trafficking mostly involved moving large quantities of marijuana and hashish. As cocaine gained popularity in the 1980s, Ross and Ryan made plans to begin smuggling large shipments into Canada from Florida. Ross drew the attention of police in the U.S. when he took control following Ryan’s death. Informants told police that by 1984, arrangements were made to have cars outfitted with secret compartments for delivering 15-kilogram packages of cocaine from Florida to Canada on a bi-weekly basis.

By 1986, the amounts being delivered to Ross and his partners increased to between 20 and 40 kilograms every two weeks. Police later learned the cocaine was being supplied by a Colombian cartel operating out of Florida. The following year, Ross had grown so confident that his deals with the cartel expanded to include shipments of up to 200 kilograms sent to England and Holland.

When Ross was tried in Gainesville, Fla. in 1992, a jury heard evidence that he was involved in a 6,000 kilogram shipment of cocaine that went through the Port of Montreal.

The trial revealed how far Ross’s tentacles had extended internationally. After the prosecution closed its case, Michel Amyot, then a detective with the Montreal police, told the Montreal Gazette: “Nowhere will you find a case where law enforcement from so many places has got together with one common goal.”

Evidence presented during the trial in Florida came from the RCMP, Sûreté du Québec, FBI, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the U.S. Marshal Service, and police from the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.

On May 15, 1992, the jury found Ross guilty of conspiring to import and traffic in at least 10,000 kilograms of cocaine and more than 300 tonnes of marijuana from 1975 to 1989. He received the life sentence he was still serving 26 years later when he died. The following year, Ross was convicted in a different case, heard in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., of conspiring to traffic in cocaine and conspiracy to commit murder.

The judge in that case sentenced Ross to a 30-year prison term to be served after his life sentence. His lawyer later told the Montreal Gazette that Ross reacted to the sentence by saying: “They can ship (my) body to Florida to start the last 30 years.”

Ross’s criminal record in Montreal dated back to May 8, 1962, when he was convicted of car theft at the age of 18. One of the first signs of his involvement in drug trafficking came in 1980, when he was sentenced to a 23-month prison term for the possession of a narcotic for the purposes of trafficking.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Woman in dog-attack case awaits sentence for selling ecstasy

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The woman who was looking after a dog when it attacked and seriously injured two of her grandchildren inside her home in Montreal North last week is awaiting a sentence in a case in which she recently pleaded guilty to selling ecstasy pills to undercover cops.

On Aug. 19, Frances Richardson, 62, was looking after a dog for someone she knew when it bit her 4-year-old granddaughter on the head. According to the Montreal police report into what happened that day, Richardson took her granddaughter to a hospital and asked her daughter to look after her three other grandchildren, between the ages of 20 months and 11, who were still inside her home. The dog, described in the report as an American pit bull, had been placed in between two doors at the entranceway but it somehow managed to escape and attacked her 7-year-old grandson. The boy suffered a fractured arm and several lacerations when the dog bit him. The police report states that six people in all, including Richardson, were injured by the dog and that she was doing a favour for a pregnant woman who wanted to get rid of it and had made arrangements to have it sent to New Brunswick.

At the time, Richardson was scheduled to have a sentence hearing this week, at the Montreal courthouse, where she pleaded guilty in May to drug trafficking. On Monday, lawyers involved in the case informed Quebec Court Judge Robert Sansfaçon that they were not ready to proceed. The judge agreed to put off the hearing to a date in September.

On May 17, Richardson appeared before Sansfaçon and admitted she sold six ecstasy pills to two undercover cops within the space of a week. According to a summary of the case provided to the court by Richardson’s lawyer, Steeve Rancourt, the Montreal police began their investigation after receiving an anonymous phone call in August last year. The tip somehow allowed one undercover cop to arrange to purchase four pills for $40 from Richardson, who was dealing out of her home.

During the same hearing in May, prosecutor Laurence Charbonneau-Emery highlighted how Richardson’s then 3-year-old granddaughter answered the door when the undercover cop came knocking. It is not clear if the girl who answered the door was the same child who required 16 stitches to close the wounds from the dog’s attack last week.

Rancourt said that a week after the first purchase was made, a second undercover cop was able to purchase two ecstasy pills from Richardson pills for $20.

The Montreal North borough ordered that the dog be euthanized, but last week the Montreal police obtained a court order that the canine be kept alive while it continues its investigation. On Monday, a Montreal police spokesperson said that what happened inside Richardson’s home when the dog attacked is still under investigation.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Man charged with killing girlfriend wants statement to police tossed out

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A man who has been assessed as having the intellectual capacity of a 10-year-old will learn later this year if a statement he gave to police, following his arrest for the murder of his girlfriend, is admissible in his trial.

Yves Nadeau, 59, has been on trial at the Montreal courthouse for the second-degree murder of 62-year-old Louise Girard since April. The Crown has yet to begin presenting its evidence because Superior Court Justice Mario Longpré must first determine whether the things Nadeau said while he was interrogated by police, following his arrest in February 2014, can be used against him as evidence.

Girard was stabbed to death and, during the interrogation, Nadeau insisted she had fallen and cut herself on a television inside the apartment they shared for eight years on Sherbrooke St. E., near Chambly St. in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

On April 30, after having heard evidence during a procedure referred to as a voir dire (a trial within a trial), Longpré ordered that Nadeau undergo a psychiatric evaluation. On Monday, the judge was presented with a report declaring that Nadeau is fit to stand trial even though France Proulx, the psychiatrist who evaluated him, agrees that “his difficulties are mainly in connection with an intellectual deficiency.”

“Mr. Yves Nadeau understands that he is accused of the murder of his partner Louise. He considers these accusations unjustified. He has given his version of events, which match completely those that he offered to (Proulx) when he was evaluated in May 2014,” Proulx wrote while noting the accused understands the difference between guilty and not guilty verdicts. “(Nadeau) is able to understand the role of a lawyer, of a prosecutor and a judge.”

Based on what was contained in Proulx’s evaluation, Michel Parisien, a psychologist who testified in April, was asked to return to court on Monday to see if Proulx’s recent evaluation changed the opinion he provided four months ago. In April, Parisien expressed doubt over whether Nadeau understands legal concepts. He wrote that he believes Nadeau only gives the appearance that he understands basic human rights, like a person’s right to remain silent when they are arrested.

Before he filed his report, Parisien watched a recording of the police interrogation and noted that at one point Nadeau appeared to believe he was being interviewed by a journalist instead of a homicide detective.

“Our observations leave us to conclude that Mr. Yves Nadeau, because of his intellectual deficiency, could not understand his fundamental rights after his arrest on Feb. 24, 2014,” Parisien wrote.

The psychologist also noted that Nadeau has difficulty following long sentences. Parisien also wrote that Nadeau initially lied to him when he was asked if he knew how to read. Nadeau said he liked to read newspapers but later admitted he would only look at the photos inside them and couldn’t even read the descriptions that described the images. Parisien agreed with the assessment made by a psychologist who examined the accused in 2014 and determined he had the IQ of someone who is around the age of 10.

On Monday, Parisien said Proulx’s evaluation did not change his opinion.

Longpré is scheduled to hear arguments on the voir dire on Friday. He informed both lawyers that he will probably end up deliberating on the issue and make a decision in October.

pcherry@postmedia.com

Lachine man admits to killing girlfriend's son with a spear

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A 44-year-old Lachine resident put a halt to his upcoming jury trial at the Montreal courthouse by admitting he stabbed his girlfriend and killed her son with a spear after a day of heavy drinking nearly three years ago.

Philippe Gloutney appeared before Quebec Superior Court Justice François Dadour on Tuesday as notices were about to be sent out to potential jurors for a trial that was expected to begin in a few weeks. Although he was initially charged with first-degree murder in the death of Lee-Christopher Larocque and the attempted murder of Christine Brooks, Larocque’s mother, Gloutney was able to plead guilty to the reduced charges of manslaughter and aggravated assault.

Philippe Gloutney

This was after lawyers on both sides of the case agreed Gloutney was heavily intoxicated on Nov. 6, 2015, when he attacked the victims with a spear he had made. A sample of his blood seized three hours after the police arrived revealed his blood-alcohol level was 136 mg per 100 ml of blood. A toxicologist estimated Gloutney’s level was 225 mg, more than twice the legal impaired-driving limit, when he killed Larocque. The toxicologist based this on Gloutney’s estimates of how much he drank in roughly seven hours

When the police arrived at the Sherbrooke St. apartment where all three were living at the time, they found Larocque, 38, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his mother’s room with the spear used to kill him still stuck in his left hand. Brooks, who had called 911, was found near the entrance to the hallway sitting in a pool of her own blood. When she made the call, Brooks said: “He’s killing us.” When the operator asked who she was referring to, Brooks replied: “Philippe Gloutney.”

Police officers found Gloutney asleep on a couch. He later told police he blacked out at some point after consuming about 18 drinks before and during a birthday party held for Brooks.

“Gloutney can recall a dispute about his cat with (Larocque) when he was back from the party. He remembers (Larocque) making a movement he perceived as threatening. He (had) a blackout about the rest of the event, remembering waking up when the police (were) on the scene,” prosecutor Jasmine Guillaume said while reading from a six-page statement of facts that she and defence lawyer Sharon Sandiford agreed upon before Tuesday’s hearing.

As Guillaume continue to read from the document, it was apparent Gloutney and Larocque’s problems with each involved more than just a cat. Gloutney and Brooks had been in a conjugal relationship before but were merely living together at the time. Gloutney hoped they could resume the relationship, but Larocque’s presence in the apartment appeared to complicate things.

“After losing his apartment, (Larocque) came to live with his mother and (Gloutney) in July 2015. (Larocque) was known to have a (problem with alcohol). His family would encourage him to go to therapy, although he didn’t want to engage in the process. (Gloutney) didn’t want (Larocque) to live with them. He wanted him to go to therapy and stop drinking,” Guillaume said as she read on. “The relationship between (Gloutney) and (Larocque) was tense.”

Guillaume said she and Sandiford were not able to reach an agreement on a possible sentence for Gloutney. He is scheduled to have a sentencing hearing on Sept. 14.

After the hearing was over, Sandiford told reporters that both sides in the case had consulted expert witnesses who agreed Gloutney was very drunk when he attacked both victims with a spear and a pair of scissors.

“The circumstances of this were very, very sad,” Sandiford said. “When people are together and they are intoxicated, the little things can explode, even a stupidity”

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Reza Tehrani, Montrealer who bribed CRA employee, faces sentencing hearing

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A Montreal businessman who bribed a Canada Revenue Agency employee before and after the public official agreed to become an undercover agent in an RCMP investigation is scheduled to have a sentence hearing at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday.

In May, Reza Tehrani, 60, the former owner of the Institut Technique Aviron de Montréal, a trade school based in Town of Mount Royal, pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges including one count of conspiracy that carries a maximum life sentence. He admitted he began paying a series of bribes to Jean-Guy Ouellette, a CRA employee, beginning in 2005 when Tehrani sought help to have $140,000 in scientific research development credits from the federal government awarded to him while he and partners in another company Tehrani part-owned were embroiled in a court dispute over who should actually receive them.

Tehrani also admitted to paying other bribes to Ouellette, including in 2011, without knowing the public official had by then become an undercover agent for the RCMP while it investigated the CRA’s downtown Montreal offices as part of Project Coche, a probe into allegations that several CRA auditors were corrupt. Eight auditors were ultimately charged with crimes between 2012 and 2014 but the investigation was not limited to people who received or solicited bribes.

Tehrani also admitted to having offered $60,000 to Ouellette in an effort to avoid paying more than $2.7 million in taxes owed by him, his brother, the trade school in TMR and another company Tehrani owned.

The Côte-St-Luc resident was the victim of at least two violent crimes in the past eight years. In June 2013, someone tried to damage his home by tossing a Molotov cocktail through a front window. The incendiary device failed to break through the double paned window and it caused little damage to the home.

Aviron Techhnical Institute owner Reza Mohammad Tehrani-Cohen, 53, was kidnapped outside of the building on Monday at around 5:45 p.m., students and attendants from in the building stand outside on their breaks in Montreal on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

In November 2010, Tehrani (who is sometimes referred to by the family name Tehrani-Cohen) was kidnapped by two men outside the trade school and was held against his will for a day. He later told a CBC reporter that he was convinced his abductors wanted to hold him for a ransom because they were “jealous” of his lavish lifestyle. He said that while being held the kidnappers made reference to having seen him driving a Bentley and a Ferrari. No one was charged in connection with the kidnapping.

The charges Tehrani pleaded guilty to earlier this year were filed in 2012 when he and his wife, Liora Suissa, were arrested in Project Coche. At the time, the RCMP alleged Tehrani had attempted to defraud the federal government out of $6 million. In May, Tehrani pleaded guilty to three charges of defrauding the government, corrupting a public official, conspiracy, and two counts of fraud. On the same day, Tehrani’s lawyer, Pierre L’Ecuyer, and prosecutor Anne-Marie Manoukiane informed the court that all charges brought against Suissa would be dropped.

Quebec Court Judge Dominque Joly was also told that a common suggestion on a sentence would be presented to her by May 28 but, according to court records, Tehrani has not been able to appear before the judge since he pleaded guilty. In June, L’Ecuyer requested that the sentence hearing be postponed to Tuesday because his client was hospitalized.

Ouellete testified at length in 2014 during the preliminary inquiry stage of Tehrani’s case. But last year, a judge presiding over another Project Coche-related case was informed that Ouellette, who was retired when he agreed to work undercover for the RCMP, has since died.

When he testified in 2014, Ouellette alleged that he was drawn into Tehrani’s tax files by a CRA team leader of auditors who still faces charges in a Project Coche case that has yet to go to trial.

Ouellette said the team leader initially tried to get him involved in Tehrani’s case under false pretences. He said the team leader claimed CRA should look into a lawsuit Tehrani was named in because it involved the dispute over who should receive research credits from the federal government. Ouellette said he was puzzled because the team leader claimed a judge had delivered a decision in the case when, in reality, the case had just started. Ouellette said he told the team leader that they’d be wasting their time on the file unless a judge had actually delivered a decision.

“(The team leader) later came to my office and said ‘Mr Tehrani is an important person — he owns Aviron.’ I knew Montreal well and I had never heard of Aviron,” Ouellette said while adding later that the team leader informed him that Tehrani drove a Bentley and was seeking seeking more than $100,000 in research credits. At one point in the conversation, Ouellette recalled, he and the team leader began to whisper when it became apparent they were discussing the possibility of a bribe.

Ouellette said the research credits were eventually transferred to Tehrani and that the businessman paid him $10,000 in three instalments.

For the first payment, of $3,000, arrangements were made for Ouellette to meet Tehrani at the Cavendish Mall. He said Tehrani drove him in a convertible to a luxury home “somewhere on Mount Royal” and they entered through the garage.

“We walked by the famous Bentley,” Ouellette said. He testified that Tehrani headed to another part of the house before returning with an envelope containing $3,000. He also said that while he waited for Tehrani he began to wonder where the house he was standing in was located “and whether (former Canadian prime minister) Brian Mulroney lived next door.”

The undercover agent said he was eventually paid the $10,000. But he also described a strange incident where, before he was paid in full, a man driving a plain white van parked the vehicle in front of his home and informed him “with just a few words” that he had a plasma large-screen television for him. Ouellette said it was never made clear to him that the television came from Tehrani but he assumed it was because the CRA team leader insisted on having Ouellette’s home address just before it was delivered.

Ouellette said the gift proved to be more of a headache than anything to him because whenever he would turn it on circuit breakers on the electrical panel in his aging house would trip.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Suspect in kidnapping of Chez Cora chief was in financial trouble

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A Laval man charged with kidnapping the president of the popular Chez Cora chain of breakfast restaurants will remain detained for at least two more days for a a bail hearing scheduled for Friday.

Paul Zaidan, 49, made a brief appearance before a judge at the Laval courthouse on Thursday. He entered a not guilty plea to some of the charges he faces.

Zaidan, who was arrested on Tuesday as a suspect in last year’s kidnapping, was recently declared bankrupt and was facing the possibility of losing his home.

Zaidan, who lives in the Chomedey district of Laval, faces seven charges in connection with the March 8, 2017, kidnapping of Chez Cora president Nicholas Tsouflidis.

Zaidan was reportedly the former owner of a failed Chez Cora franchise in Nuns’ Island.

According to court records, Zaidan — also the owner of trucking company Le Phénicien Inc. — was declared bankrupt in June of this year.

A proposal he made to pay his debts was rejected, and a trustee based in St-Jérôme took steps to take control of his home, estimated to be worth more than $650,000.

Zaidan reportedly lost his Chez Cora franchise in 2014.

Tsouflidis was abducted from his home and held against his will for hours before he was left on the side of a road in Laval. A passerby notified the police.

The Sûreté du Québec believes at least two men were involved in the abduction.

On Aug. 30, the SQ obtained two warrants for Zaidan’s arrest accusing him of theft, uttering threats to use violence against the victim’s children if he should call the police, and “using threats, accusations or violence” to force the victim’s mother, Cora Tsouflidou, the founder of Chez Cora, to pay a sum of money for her son’s liberation.

pcherry@postmedia.com 

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Pierrefonds man who killed Kelly-Anne Drummond denied parole again

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A former Pierrefonds resident has been denied parole a second time as he continues to serve a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend more than a decade ago.

Following a hearing held on Tuesday at the Cowansville Institution, a medium-security penitentiary in the Eastern Townships, the Parole Board of Canada determined that Martin Morin-Cousineau, 44, remains an unacceptable risk to society because he has shown little change since he killed 24-year-old Kelly-Anne Drummond in 2004.

Drummond, a former elite athlete at John Abbott College and Concordia University, had moved into an apartment with Morin-Cousineau two months prior to her death. During his trial, he claimed Drummond died as the result of an accident while they argued. The jury that heard his case obviously did not believe him as he was convicted, on April 10, 2006, of second-degree murder. The conviction came with an automatic life sentence and Morin-Cousineau’s eligibility for full parole was set at 13 years. He was denied day parole in 2014 and the parole board found little has changed since then.

A written summary of the decision lists a series of incidents involving contraband, including how his mother’s access to visits to the penitentiary was suspended in February last year after she allegedly tried to pass “tobacco and various articles of contraband” into Cowansville Institution. A month later, guards seized 15 litres of a banned liquid found inside his cell.

In November, while taking courses, Morin-Cousineau argued with a teacher and hurled insults at him and three years ago he was briefly transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary after he threatened a fellow inmate.

Doreen and John Drummond show a photo of their daughter, Kelly-Anne Drummond, 24, in 2005 in the Palais de Justice outside the preliminary hearing for Martin Morin-Cousineau, 30.

The board determined that Morin-Cousineau still has a lot of work to do if he wants to be released.

The decision came as no surprise to Drummond’s mother, Doreen Haddad. As a close relative to the victim of Morin-Cousineau’s crime, Haddad is provided with reports on his progress, or lack thereof, while incarcerated. On Wednesday, she told the Montreal Gazette she was certain he would be turned down for a release. She was so convinced, she said, she decided to not attend the parole hearing as she had in 2014.

“I wasn’t going to be part of the circus anymore,” Haddad said while questioning the legislation that allows an offender to seek parole again, after a fixed amount of time, even if it is clear they have made no progress toward rehabilitation.

“I have the files that say he was not ready. Going to the parole hearing would have filled me with worry and concern. I’m not going to allow him to drag me down,” she said. “They should not be allowed (to have a new parole hearing) unless they have the letters that support it. Why do we allow this to happen? It was a waste of taxpayer money.”

The summary also notes that Morin-Cousineau made comments during his hearing that showed a lack of remorse or empathy toward Drummond. Haddad was informed that, during the hearing, he claimed he deliberately threw the knife at Drummond. It was a change from his claim made at trial that the knife somehow killed her after he threw it in the air during an argument. During the trial, the prosecution highlighted the fact that nearly 10 centimetres of the knife’s blade remained lodged inside her skull and argued Morin-Cousineau stabbed her with significant force to kill her.

“He’s still in denial,” Haddad said on Wednesday “He has never owned the crime.”

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Two men admit to killing Rwandan refugee over simple drug debt

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Two men who were set to undergo a lengthy murder trial before a jury next week at the Montreal courthouse opted instead on Thursday to admit to their roles in the violent death of Gilbert Nshimiyumukiza, a Rwandan refugee who had come to Canada to avoid the violence he witnessed in his home country.

Nshimiyumukiza arrived in Montreal in 2009 looking to begin a new life after he witnessed his parents be killed as part of the genocide that ripped Rwanda apart. His new life in Canada began well but, as friends and relatives of the victim would tell the Montreal Gazette in 2016, Nshimiyumukiza struggled to set aside what he witnessed in his homeland and it became apparent he gradually began a descent into drug abuse.

On Thursday, Superior Court Justice Michel Pennou was informed of how Nshimiyumukiza ended up being shot in the head on April 30, 2016, in his basement apartment on Grenet St., in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. This happened during a home invasion while an alleged drug dealer was looking to collect a debt.

Nikita Hunt

Two men who were part of the home invasion — Jermaine Gero, 44, and Nikita Hunt, 29 — pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and manslaughter respectively on Thursday and put an end to what was expected to be a six-week trial with jury selection set to begin on Monday. Both men admitted they were there to support Robertson Shamora, 31, a Montreal resident who for weeks had been looking to collect money that Nshimiyumukiza owed him for drugs. Shamora remains accused of first-degree murder in the case but has yet to be arrested.

“After entering the building they headed directly to (Nshimiyumukiza’s) apartment and forced their way in. All the while, Shamora was shouting, “Yeah, where’s my money, where’s my money now,” prosecutor Genevieve Rondeau Marchand said as she read from a joint statement of facts prepared for Thursday’s hearing.

Jermaine Gero

Gero was armed with a gun during the home invasion and he pointed it at Nshimiyumukiza and his roommate while Hunt and Shamora yelled at them. A fourth man, who has never been identified, joined the trio and used a small bat to assault Nshimiyumukiza’s roommate. A publication ban has been placed on the roommate’s name out of concerns for his safety. He was scheduled to testify as a prosecution witness during the trial. He would have testified that he saw Gero shoot his friend in the head. Nshimiyumukiza was taken to a hospital where he died the following day.

Images of all four men who took part in the home invasion were captured on a surveillance camera as they entered the apartment building at around 1 a.m. Another video camera captured images of the men as the left the apartment through a living room window. Police later recovered a palm print off the window that would provide a match to Hunt. Gero left behind a pair of distinctive yellow gloves, visible on footage from one of the cameras in the building, and police recovered his DNA from one of them. Both men were arrested months later and Hunt still possessed the gun used to kill the victim. The firearm was wrapped in a bandana that had a small blood stain on it, which provided more DNA evidence linking Gero to the murder.

Defence lawyer James Dawson outlined a common suggestion that could see Hunt be sentenced to an overall nine-year prison term. Dawson said his client is a permanent resident in Canada and that Hunt realizes he could be deported to his country of origin, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as a result of what he pleaded guilty to. Pennou will decide if he agrees with the sentence on Tuesday. The judge is also scheduled to hear arguments on Gero’s parole eligibility on the same day. Gero received an automatic life sentence when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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N.D.G. massage therapist sentenced to 18 months for sexual assaults

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A man who operated as a massage therapist in Notre Dame de Graçe for years has been sentenced to an 18-month prison term for having sexually assaulted seven of his clients.

David Kost admitted to having abused the women who sought his services to deal with pain they were experiencing. He operated his business out of his home. Quebec Court Judge Denis Mondor noted that the sexual assaults were carried out over a period of four years, from 2012 to 2016, and listed this as an aggravating factor when he delivered the sentence.

The judge also said the abuses involved a breach of trust because the women were in a vulnerable position when they were sexually assaulted.

In some cases, Kost rubbed his erect penis on the women while he massaged them. In one case he inserted his fingers inside a client’s vagina and claimed his hand slipped when she objected.

More details to come.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Drug dealer tied to Hells Angels ordered to turn over DNA because of Facebook posting

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A Quebec Court judge has ruled that a photo accompanied by a comment made by a drug dealer while he was being sought in connection with a police crackdown on cocaine trafficking networks tied to the Hells Angels posed enough of a threat to justify issuing an order that he turn over a sample of his DNA to authorities.

“To use an English expression, you were making a statement,” Judge Daniel Bédard said Friday while he sentenced Denis Desputeaux, 24, to a 28-month prison term for having trafficked in cocaine and methamphetamine.

Desputeaux was in Dominican Republic on April 24 when members of the Escouade nationale de répression contre le crime organisé (ENRCO) spread out across Quebec to make arrests in Project Objection, an investigation into drug trafficking networks tied to the biker gang. The arrests began at 5:30 a.m. A little more than more than an hour later, a photo of a police officer dressed in riot gear with a bullet wound to his face was posted on Desputeaux’s Facebook page. The photo was accompanied with a comment “Talk to the police in a language they understand.”

The posting was interpreted as a threat by police officers who worked with ENRCO and earlier this week, prosecutor Marie-France Plante argued the message sent merited an order requiring that Desputeaux be required to turn over a sample of his DNA.

Such orders are normally issued when an offender is convicted of a violent crime. The sample is placed in a national database to determine if the person is linked to other unsolved crimes. Bédard said he agreed with the request, in part, because given the context it was comparable to someone posting a hate message on a social network.

“It is more than a photo. I don’t see why it should be less important than a (case) where a member of a visible minority was (threatened),” Bédard said after criticizing Desputeaux for not having followed the unwritten rules of the organized crime milieu where a major police takedown of a drug trafficking network is seen as “strictly business.”

Bédard underlined that it is stressful for police officers to participate in major roundups of drug traffickers because they never know what to expect will happen when they knock on a suspect’s door.

“The tension mounts (as arrests are made),” Bédard said while adding that a message like the one Desputeaux posted would only serve to increase that tension. Desputeaux, a tall imposing man whose arms, neck and head are covered in tattoos, including one of the acronym ACAB, short for the expression “All cops are bastards,” took in Bédard’s words without displaying any reaction on his face.

Desputeaux and Kenny Maheu, 28, another man who was sentenced on Friday, were ultimately located in Dominican Republic and were arrested by that country’s national police force on June 26. Maheu was arrested in Boca Chica and Desputeaux was apprehended in Puerto Plata, a popular vacation destination. According to a release issued by the Policia Nacional, the arrests came as the result of information they received from Interpol.

Seven weeks after they were returned to Canada, both men pleaded guilty to three charges; trafficking in cocaine, conspiracy to commit drug trafficking and trafficking in methamphetamine. The charges involved a network that sold drugs in Cowansville, a town in the Eastern Townships 90 kilometres southeast of Montreal. In July, Massimo Corbin, another participant in the conspiracy, pleaded guilty to the same charges and received an overall sentence of 720 days.

Maheu was sentenced to an overall prison term of 33 months on Friday. His involvement in the network based in Cowansville began as soon as he finished serving a 27-month prison term he received in March 2015 for have been part of a different network that controlled drug trafficking in the Bois-Franc and and Centre-du-Québec regions between 2012 and 2014. About 40 people based around Victoriaville sold cocaine, methamphetamine and pot and were arrested as part of a Sûreté du Québec investigation dubbed Project Macramé. When Maheu pleaded guilty in the Macramé case, the court was told he was selling cannabis by the pound and meth pills in large packages.

Maheu was considered to be one of the heads of the ring and was also involved in selling firearms. When he was sent to a federal penitentiary in 2015, he was classified as having ties to the Hells Angels and a member of one of its support clubs, the Devils Warriors based in Sherbrooke. Maheu later told the Parole Board of Canada that he left the gang because his girlfriend did not approve.

A decision made by the parole board, in 2016, noted that Maheu continued to associate with members of the Hells Angels while he served his sentence. He was granted a statutory release on April 12, 2017, and according to the charge sheet filed in his most recent case, he began dealing drugs in Cowansville a few months later.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Man charged with harassing C.D.N.—N.D.G. mayor to face new accusations

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A 58-year-old man who was scheduled to begin a trial next week on a charge alleging he criminally harassed Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough Mayor Sue Montgomery will instead make his first court appearance on a new charge and possibly more on Monday.

Robert Michael Edgar, a Notre-Dame-de-Grâce resident also known as Robin Edgar, was scheduled to have a trial on a charge alleging he caused Montgomery “to reasonably fear for her safety or the safety of anyone known to her” before and after she was elected in 2017. But on Friday, the accused’s lawyer, Jordan Trevick, said the trial is expected to be postponed until April next year because Edgar allegedly violated his conditional release during his attendance at a Montreal council meeting in March. He also might be charged with a similar offence related to his attendance at a council meeting held in August.

Last month, Edgar was issued a summons alleging he violated his conditional release by communicating or attempting to communicate with the borough mayor during the March council meeting. The day before that summons was issued, Edgar showed up at Montreal city hall, on Aug. 20, and used a question period for citizens to ask two city councillors questions about Montgomery, while she was present at the council meeting.

Edgar, who was handcuffed and escorted out of city hall during a council meeting in December 2017, repeatedly challenged two councillors on whether he had ever libelled Montgomery.

One of the councillors, Marvin Rotrand, questioned why Edgar had shown up at council meetings “at least a dozen times” to ask questions with no substance.

“Coming here to council and repeating something that targets a member of council without offering anything concrete — the first time members of council are probably interested in (hearing) it — but after that it begins to look like a vendetta,” Rotrand told Edgar on Aug. 20.

Edgar returned later the same day to ask another councillor, Alex Norris, similar questions and at one point Montgomery rose from her seat and said: “Mr. Edgar, I’ll see you in court on Sept. 10.”

Edgar has described himself, in a blog, as “an excommunicated Unitarian whose ‘alternative spiritual practice’ includes publicly exposing and denouncing Unitarian Universalist injustices, abuses, and hypocrisy.” In the same blog, he alleges Montgomery is part of a “coverup” involving the church. In 2008, Edgar agreed to follow court-imposed conditions in a peace bond requested by the Unitarian Church, which accused him of harassment. The conditions were imposed over a 12-month period. Montgomery has said her history with Edgar began more than 15 years ago, while she was a reporter with the Montreal Gazette, when he repeatedly asked her to report on him and his religious beliefs. In her complaint to police she stated she believes Edgar has had “a break with reality” and described how he has filmed her on several occasions while she worked as a reporter and while she campaigned during the 2017 election.

Trevick said he was recently informed that Edgar might face additional charges related to his appearance at the Aug. 20 council meeting when he appears in court on Monday. He also said a request will be made on Monday to postpone the trial to next year so that any additional charges Edgar faces can be handled together. A Montreal police spokesperson confirmed that they investigated whether Edgar breached his release conditions while at city hall last month.

Man who killed woman in Dorval by stomping on her head to be released

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A West Island resident who killed a woman he had just met by stomping on her head during an argument has been ordered to reside at a halfway house while he continues to serve what remains of his twelve-year prison term.

On April 23, 2010, James Gould received an overall sentence of 15 years following his manslaughter conviction in the death of Karina Paola Esquivel-Moya, an 18-year-old woman he killed in 2007 in an apartment in Dorval while he was high on drugs and alcohol. By the time his case came to an end he had 12 years left to serve.

When sentencing arguments were made in the case the Crown asked that Gould be declared a dangerous offender which could have left him with an indeterminate sentence where it would have been up to the Parole Board of Canada to determine when he was ready for a release. The prosecutor in the case, Thierry Nadon, who is now a judge, argued that Gould’s criminal record at that point, which included six assault convictions, indicated a gradation in violence and highlighted how, on the same day he was convicted of manslaughter, he fought with a fellow detainee at a detention and was found to have hidden a 6-inch long blade hidden in his anus. Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque chose instead to designate Gould as a long-term offender through which conditions can be imposed on him for 10 years after his sentence expires in 2022.

Gould, who is now 34, was never granted parole. But earlier this year, he reached his statutory release date: the two-thirds mark of his sentence, which meant he automatically qualified for a release. In such situations, the Parole Board of Canada is left to determine if conditions should be imposed on an offender. According to a summary of a written decision the board recently made in Gould’s case, several conditions were imposed because “it believes that you still have a propensity for violence.” One condition requires that Gould remain at a halfway house for the time that remains on his sentence.

In 2014, Gould assaulted a guard at a penitentiary in Drummondville, and was sentenced to a 6-month prison term to be served consecutively to the one he received for killing Esquivel-Moya. In June 2017, he was transferred to a penitentiary in New Brunswick for his own protection after having been assaulted by two other inmates.

“Since this time, you have shown positive behaviour and have worked on your contributing factors through additional programming and institutional employment. It has been referred to as the most stable period of incarceration to date,” parole board member François Levert wrote in the decision.

Gould is expected to be released to a halfway house located in or around Montreal. But, as part of the conditions imposed on his release, he is not allowed to be in Lachine or several municipalities on the South Shore to prevent him from making contact with Esquivel-Moya’s family. He is also required to find a job or study and follow a curfew. Gould will also have to “immediately report all intimate sexual and non-sexual relationships and friendships with females to your parole officer.”

The month prior to the homicide, Gould had moved into his girlfriend’s apartment in Dorval. His girlfriend was friends with Esquivel-Moya and had invited her to the apartment for a dinner. During his trial, Gould testified that he had consumed 13 ecstasy pills, at least 20 beers and marijuana before he began arguing with his girlfriend and then Esquivel-Moya. He punched the young woman in the face twice, causing her to fall to the floor before he stomped on her head at least five times. The victim’s skull was fractured in four places and she was declared dead after she was taken to a hospital.

pcherry@postmedia.com


Growth in container traffic creates 65 jobs at Port of Montreal

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Strong growth in container traffic from Europe to Canada will create 65 new full-time jobs at the Port of Montreal.

The Maritime Employers Association (MEA) made the announcement on Monday, stating that the new hires will represent an investment close to $8 million annually. In the coming weeks, the association expects to hire 50 longshoremen and 15 checkers to “help meet the demands of the strong growth in container traffic from Europe at the Port of Montreal.” This is in addition to extending the terminal gate opening hours at the port.

The association, a non-profit organization comprised of member companies in the maritime sector like ship owners and operators, currently has 1,200 employees. The Port of Montreal is the second-largest port in Canada.

“Since the signing of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the Port of Montreal has become a preferred shipping route for carriers to access the markets in central Canada and the American Midwest,” Stéphane Morency, president and CEO of the MEA, stated in the statement.

Drug dealer tied to murdered Mob-tied loan shark granted day parole

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A Laval man who recently admitted he served as the longtime right-hand man to a powerful Mafia-tied loan shark who was murdered five years ago has been granted day parole. He is serving a sentence for cocaine possession as well as the small collection of firearms found when police searched his home.

Nicolae-Catalin Vinersar, 51, does not have much in terms of a criminal record but, according to a written summary of a decision made late last week by the Parole Board of Canada, he recently admitted to his parole officers that he “was in the service” of a high-ranking organized crime figure for several years before Vinersar was arrested in January 2017 by the Montreal police as part an investigation into drug traffickers who operated in Montreal North.

Montreal police found a collection of firearms when they searched Nicolae-Catalin Vinersar's home.

Montreal police found a collection of firearms when they searched Nicolae-Catalin Vinersar’s home.

“Your (parole officers) underline that this man was considered to be the most important loan shark in Montreal and that he was a shareholder and manager in several companies that did private loans. He was involved in many illicit activities, including money laundering and, earlier in his career, in the importation of cocaine. He had links to outlaw motorcycle gangs as well as the Mafia and had many enemies,” the author of the summary wrote before noting that the same person was killed in 2013. “You maintain that your role was to drive your boss to different places during the day and insist that you never assisted in any events. You also transported astronomical sums of money to Toronto or from Toronto to Montreal for him at a rate of once a month.”

While the loan shark is not named in the decision it is an apparent reference to Roger Valiquette, a well-known loan shark who was tied to Montreal Mafia leader Raynald Desjardins. Valiquette was gunned down in Laval in December 2013. In the early 1990s, he was charged, in Florida, in a conspiracy to smuggle 60 kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. At the time of his death he held permits that allowed him to loan money through a series of companies he owned. Valiquette’s murder remains unsolved. As reported by the Montreal Gazette in July, he was shot minutes after having dined with two West Island residents who were later alleged to be the leaders of a major drug trafficking ring.

While attempting to explain to the board how he was drawn to a life of crime, Vinersar said he grew up in Romania when it was ruled by a tight-fisted communist regime. He said he was taken aback when he arrived in Canada and realized how much freedom he could enjoy compared to where he had come from.

When the Montreal police raided his home in Laval they found 77 grams of cocaine, $10,000 in cash and six firearms. One of the firearms was Tec-9 semi-automatic pistol equipped with a silencer. Police believe it was manufactured at Perfection Métal, a factory in LaSalle that produced several firearms that ended up in the hands of organized crime figures and were used in a series of Mob hits. The company’s owner, Jean-Pierre Huot, was sentenced in June to a 7-year prison term for manufacturing the firearms without a permit.

“The board is concerned by the dangerousness of the firearms found in your possession. You should have been aware that you were hiding prohibited assault weapons that could have caused serious danger and you closed your eyes to the risks they represented,” the parole board noted while explaining why it was turning Vinersar down for full parole for the time being.

He was granted day parole instead because his parole officers felt the risk he represents of reoffending can be managed at a halfway house. They informed the board that he appeared to have acknowledged the factors that contributed to his criminality that he worked a job cleaning the main entrance to the penitentiary where he is serving time.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Man charged in Mile End death and dismemberment case led nomadic life

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A murder case brought against a travelling musician who is alleged to have killed and dismembered a fellow bandmate inside an apartment they were sharing in Mile End weeks before police even knew the victim was missing is scheduled to return before a judge at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Raymond Henry Muller, 51, was charged with the first-degree murder of Cedric Gagnon, a fellow musician. According to reports, both men were part of a Montreal band called Pirates! The band, described by friends as a collective of musicians, performed in bars in Montreal, pirate-themed festivals and often practised underneath an overpass on Van Horne Ave.

Besides first-degree murder, Muller is charged with having “improperly or indecently interfere(d) with or an indignity to the body or human remains of Cedric Gagnon whether buried or not.” The charge alleges Muller did this on July 4, the same day he killed Gagnon.

A police source has confirmed reports that homicide detectives believe Muller dismembered the body in an effort to get rid of evidence. According to La Presse, investigators believe the accused and the victim were residing in an apartment on Bernard St. E., near St-Laurent Blvd., and that Gagnon’s body parts were placed in boxes and bags, left on a sidewalk and were unwittingly taken away by a garbage truck as part of a routine collection. They also believe the victim’s remains were transported to a dumpsite long before the homicide investigation began. Gagnon’s family reported the 39-year-old as missing on Aug. 24.

The Montreal police are not saying much about the investigation, but according to court records, Muller was arrested and charged with the murder this month, almost a full two months after Gagnon is believed to have been killed.

Victim described as loving, ‘looked like a pirate’

News of Gagnon’s death, especially the manner in which he was killed, came as a shock to his friends.

Amanda Strawn, a fellow musician who met Gagnon 15 years ago at an open-mic session, described him as a loving friend “who looked like a pirate.” A year after they met, they formed a band called Amanda and the Mad Men, but it only lasted for a matter of months. They remained friends and Strawn would sometimes catch Pirates! when the band performed at Barfly, a bar on St-Laurent Blvd. not far from the apartment where Gagnon is believed to have been killed.

Strawn, a vocalist, wrote that Gagnon would sometimes invite her to jam with his band under the overpass, but she was preoccupied with other things.

“When I heard he was murdered, my heart sank. I was devastated, gutted and the tears flowed uncontrollably for two days.” Strawn wrote in an email exchange. “He was much loved by his friends and family. He will be missed and in our hearts always.”

She added that she met Muller once and “didn’t care for him.”

Muller was known to live out of a green school bus with his wife and four children for years before he was charged with killing Gagnon.

Fréderic Serre recalled seeing the green school bus while it was parked on Laval St. for a period of a few weeks when Serre lived on the street in 2013. Serre said that with parking spots always being difficult to find in the area, residents quickly took notice of the vehicle.

‘I figured they were hippies’

“Suddenly, I realized they were living there. I figured they were hippies or something like that,” Serre said while recalling that he offered Muller’s wife the use of his bathroom for showers when he realized the couple had young children.

He said the family never took him up on his offer. Serre said the bus eventually disappeared after residents on Laval St. complained to the city.

Details of the nomadic lives Muller and his family lived for more than a decade became public in 2016, after he led police on a chase through Rouyn-Noranda and parts of the Abitibi region for more than 50 kilometres on May 11, 2016.

Muller was pulled over three times, first by a highway controller who believed the vehicle had defects and then twice by Sûreté du Québec officers in patrol vehicles who ultimately had to force him to stop. Muller told the officers he was trying to get one of his children to Ste-Justine Hospital in Montreal to be treated for a heart condition. The judge who heard his case later decided Muller’s intentions “though misguided, were good” while delivering a sentence that resulted in an absolute discharge. Muller, who had no criminal record at that point, had been detained for three weeks following his arrest and he was required to follow a series of conditions for a period of four months, before his case was resolved, that prevented him from having access to the bus that had served as his family’s home for years.

Muller pleaded guilty to operating a motor vehicle in a manner that was dangerous to public safety and to leading police on a chase. His wife testified during his sentence hearing and said they had been together at that point for 16 years. She also said the couple had lived inside the modified bus for a dozen years and had four children together. Muller’s wife testified that her children — between the ages of 13 years and 10 months at the time — were educated inside the bus as they travelled across Canada and that the couple lived off their music. Her testimony about the heart condition one of her children was suffering from revealed the family had consulted doctors in Victoria, Halifax, Chicago, New York and Yukon during their travels.

“Some might say that they live on the margins of society. Rather, the court considers that they lived differently, in accordance with their values,” Judge Josée Bélanger wrote in her decision in December 2016.

The judge acknowledged that “others” might have felt that using a poorly maintained vehicle to travel a long distance to bring a child for emergency surgery was “unreasonable, even ridiculous. However, the court’s sentence is not intended for all those people, but only for the accused.”

pcherry@postmedia.com

Notorious bank bandit sentenced in Montreal armoured-car heist

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One of Canada’s most notorious bank robbers has been sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in a Rosemont heist fours years ago.

With time already served, his remaining sentence amounts to about half that.

Paul Thomas Bryntwick, 67, came to notoriety for his role in a 1977 robbery in Vancouver in which he and other members of Montreal’s West End Gang made off with more than $2.5 million in gold bars and other valuables.

At the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday, Superior Court Justice André Vincent agreed with a common recommendation that leaves Bryntwick with 47 months left to serve.

This year, Bryntwick pleaded guilty to robbing a Bank of Montreal branch on Masson St. on Oct. 29, 2014.

He and an accomplice, Walter Butt, now 57, hid inside the bank and surprised two armoured car guards when they arrived at night. The robbers were armed, and they handcuffed the guards before making off with $170,000.

Bryntwick also pleaded guilty to conspiring to rob other Montreal banks in the latter half of 2015.

In 2003, Bryntwick was sentenced to an eight-year prison term in a failed armoured car heist in Aurora, Ont.

In that case, he and his accomplices were armed with AK-47 rifles and .38-calibre handguns as they waited inside a bank — unaware that police were on to them and waiting outside.

After the Vancouver robbery, Bryntwick was “sought after for advice and guidance by criminal peers,” according to the Parole Board of Canada.

That 1977 heist saw Bryntwick and his accomplices tunnel through steel and concrete to break into the Vancouver Safety Deposit Vault. The men cracked open more than 1,200 safety deposit boxes and made off with more than $2.5 million worth of gold bars, coins, bonds, gems and cash.

He and four others were arrested in 2016 following a Montreal police investigation into several bank robberies and armoured car heists committed between 1999 and 2015.

In March, the five men pleaded guilty to considerably fewer charges than they originally faced.

Three of the men — Butt, David Stachula, 50, and Serge Fournier, 67 — were also sentenced Wednesday. Butt received the longest sentence, an overall prison term of 11-years.

German Fernandez Dominguez, a janitor who had two guns pressed against the back of his head and his back during one of the robberies, testified that his life was ruined following the hold up.

He said he has had to take medication for three years to deal with the psychological effects of what he experienced and that his wife recently left him.

“It was much better for her because I was difficult to live with,” Fernandez Dominguez said while estimating he lost up to 60 per cent of his cleaning contracts because he had had difficulty returning to work after the robbery.

Stachula, a former armoured car guard, was sentenced to an overall prison term of 10 years. He was an accomplice with Bryntwick in the failed Aurora attempt.

Stachula admitted he and Butt were the ones who traumatized Fernandez Dominguez at a bank on Van Horne Ave. on Jan. 29, 2015.

The janitor was cleaning ATMs when Butt and Stachula forced him at gunpoint to let them into the bank, where they waited for the armoured car guards to arrive with a cash delivery.

The guards were ordered to the floor and their hands and feet were bound with tie-wraps before Stachula and Butt made off with $854,000.

Yannick Gagnon, one of the guards, testified he couldn’t return to work for eight months, or work at his second job as a fireman for a year, after what he experienced.

“I had such difficulty concentrating I couldn’t even read a sentence in a newspaper,” Gagnon said.

Fournier pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery and a series of charges related to firearms that were in his possession when he was arrested. He was sentenced to an overall prison term of six years.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Montreal businessman who bribed CRA employee seeks new lawyer

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A Montreal businessman who admitted this year that he bribed a Canada Revenue Agency employee before and after the man became an undercover agent in an RCMP investigation is looking for a new lawyer before his case enters the sentencing stage.

A sentence hearing for Reza Tehrani, 60, has been put off four times since May 22, when he entered guilty pleas to seven charges filed against him in 2012.

The former owner of the Institut Technique Aviron de Montréal, a trade school based in Town of Mount Royal, admitted he began bribing Jean-Guy Ouellette of the CRA beginning in 2005.

Tehrani paid Ouellette $10,000 because wanted to have $140,000 in scientific research development tax credits transferred to him instead of his partners in a company.

Tehrani bribed Ouellette again in the years that followed — unaware that by 2011, Ouellette had agreed to work undercover for the RCMP as part of an investigation into allegations that several Montreal CRA auditors were corrupt.

Tehrani offered Ouellette $60,000 to avoid paying more than $2.7 million in taxes owed by him and his trade school.

A common suggestion on a possible sentence for Tehrani was to have been presented in late in May, but that has yet to happen.

Last week, Tehrani informed Quebec Court Judge Dominque Joly that he is looking for a new lawyer to represent him.

On Wednesday, a defence lawyer told Joly that the search for an attorney continues as he was in a conflict of interest and could not represent the businessman.

The case is to return to court on Oct. 3.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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