Inside the Montreal Mafia: The Confessions of Andrew Scoppa

By Félix Séguin and Eric Thibault

A groundbreaking, exclusive inside look at the North American Mafia and the Rizzuto family

For the first time in Canadian history, a high-ranking Mafioso agreed to break the code of omertà by talking to journalists. From October 2014 to October 2019, Félix Séguin and Eric Thibault held multiple secret meetings with Andrew Scoppa, getting an exclusive inside look at the inner workings of the North American Mafia. This book is the culmination of their perilous investigation. It sheds light on the life — and death — of one of the most influential organized crime figures in recent years.

At exactly 2 p.m., there was a knock at the door. It was him: the source every journalist dreamed of having. The short man was armed and placed his gun on the table I’d moved between the bed and a chair.

“Are you impressed?” he asked with a broad grin.

“Yes. Very much.”

Before me was Andrew Scoppa: close confidant of the late godfather Vito Rizzuto, international heroin trafficker and cold-blooded killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ECW Press
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781773059679

Book preview

Cover: Inside the Montreal Mafia: The Confessions of Andrew Scoppa by Félix Séguin and Éric Thibault, translated by Julia Jones.

Inside the Montreal Mafia

The Confessions of Andrew Scoppa

Félix Séguin and Éric Thibault

Translated by Julia Jones

Logo: ECW Press.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Are You Impressed?

Chapter 2: The Dilemma

Chapter 3: The Broom

Chapter 4: Respect

Chapter 5: The Book

Chapter 6: The Secret

Chapter 7: Loyalty

Chapter 8: Royalty

Chapter 9: The Grudge

Chapter 10: Sauce

Chapter 11: Karma

Chapter 12: Family

Chapter 13: The Bug

Chapter 14: The Tour des Canadiens

Chapter 15: The Interrogation

Chapter 16: The Source

Chapter 17: The Beginning of the End

Photography

About the Author

Copyright

Prologue

It was a hand. A left one. Broad and thick enough to suggest it belonged to a hefty guy who could be found pumping iron at the gym. The red blanket the police had draped over the body wasn’t large enough to cover it completely. It was the only part of him that was visible in the photo. I couldn’t help but feel there was something strangely familiar about that hand.

On the morning of October 21, 2019, Félix Séguin and I were supposed to be taking a break from organized crime to spend our evening covering an event that promised to overshadow every other news headline. It was the day of the federal election, and we’d been assigned to cover the vote. But we wouldn’t be reporting on election night. I wouldn’t even get the chance to cast my ballot. A murder committed on that sunny fall morning would monopolize our thoughts and occupy our entire workday.

A man was shot dead by at least one bullet to the head on Monday morning in a Pierrefonds parking lot, in the West Island, the Journal de Montréal and TVA Nouvelles websites proclaimed in the wake of the crime, which occurred at around 8 a.m.

The year had been marked by a surge in revenge killings within the ranks of the Hells Angels, the Italian Mafia and Quebec’s street gangs. As of that morning, there had already been 15 organized crime–related killings in less than ten months in the Greater Montreal area. One more victim, I thought, brushing the murder aside.

There seem to be quite a few investigators here, our colleague Maxime Deland from QMI Agency nevertheless messaged me, sensing that the heavy police presence might point to a high-profile case.

At 10:35 a.m., Deland followed up his text with a striking photo he’d taken of the crime scene, just outside a gym on Saint-Jean Boulevard. Officers from the Montreal police service (SPVM) had cordoned off the area with red police tape.

Under the red blanket the police had draped over him, it was just possible to make out the lifeless body of a man stretched out on his back. Proving that they really are everywhere in Montreal and not just on road construction sites, orange traffic cones had been used to hold the blanket in place . . .

A cap that the victim must have been wearing at the time of the shooting lay on the greyish asphalt, a few steps away from the body. The man’s left hand stuck out from beneath the blanket.

Just two months earlier, Félix and I had spent nearly a week in Europe with a former acting leader of the Montreal Mafia who had a price on his head back in the city.

You know, I have to work out first thing in the morning. I need it like a junkie needs a fix. It clears my head and does me good. If I don’t, I feel like shit and I’m not at my best, we’d heard time and time again from this man with piercing eyes, who took great care of his physique and whom some members of the criminal underworld had nicknamed Big Guy.

Over the past five years, the fearsome gangster had made the remarkable decision to break the Italian Mafia’s all-important code of omertà by agreeing to become Félix’s confidential source.

The previous summer, the influential Mafia clan leader had agreed to collaborate with us on our Montreal Mafia book project by sharing his insider information, knowledge and personal experience. It was a unique project in the history of organized crime in Canada, since it was exceptionally rare for a high-ranking Mafioso to agree to cooperate with journalists. The shrewd criminal strategist, whose intelligence had been lauded by more than one police officer, even believed he’d supply us with too much material for a single book. According to him, we’d need to write two.

For the past several months, he’d known his life was in danger. So had we. We’d therefore decided it would be less risky to hold our meetings for the project in a far-off location, across the Atlantic, in late August 2019.

It might be him. I have a funny feeling, I told Félix over the phone after examining Maxime’s photo. We immediately reached out to our police contacts to try to identify the victim as quickly as possible.

Previously, I’d had a source who was a card-carrying member of a biker gang. This was during the bloody war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine over control of the Quebec drug trade, back in the 1990s.

Our first interaction had narrowly averted disaster. I’d written an article in the Journal de Québec about a financial dispute between the man and a city’s government, and he’d called me up to give me a piece of his mind. I think I was pretty fair, was the gist of my response over the phone. I didn’t publish your home address in the article. If the police turn up at your door to arrest you, that might be a different matter . . . I’d immediately regretted my arrogance, but luckily, the tone of the conversation softened, our discussion became more respectful and we ended up talking for several minutes. The next day, the biker had called me back to give me his pager number. Over the following years, he’d passed along various bits of behind-the-scenes information on the Quebec Biker War, which had left more than 160 dead. Why? Most likely because he and his gang thought my articles would serve their own interests at the expense of the rival gang.

My first encounter with the Mafioso I thought I’d recognized in the photo had been very different. I hadn’t been as patronizing as I’d been with the biker, for one thing. There had been occasional flickers of something very intimidating in the intense gaze of this man of Italian origin, who’d insisted on being treated with respect.

The last time I’d spoken to the man Félix and I referred to as the source was the Friday before that election day morning. He’d insisted on meeting again, here in Montreal, to pass along some documents. He’d also told us he was planning to leave the country in the very near future, for an indefinite period. I’ve got to clear out until this blows over, he’d said, his plane ticket already in hand.

A few days earlier, our police contacts had strongly advised us not to risk another meeting with the Mafioso, who was living on borrowed time. If a killer tailing him was ever lucky to eliminate him, they wouldn’t hesitate to liquidate anyone with the misfortune of being in his company to avoid leaving witnesses to the crime, we’d been told more than once. We’d wisely followed this advice: on our return from Spain, we’d limited our interactions to over the phone.

The man had called me three days before that fateful Monday. As we’d said our goodbyes, I’d wished him a nice weekend and told him to take care of himself. He wasn’t the type of Mafioso to walk around surrounded by bodyguards, but he took plenty of precautions to cover his back. It hadn’t been enough.

At 11:40 a.m., I received a brief text message from a police source. I was still staring at my phone screen in disbelief when Félix called me and repeated the same two words I’d been reading over and over. It’s Andrew.

— Eric Thibault

Chapter 1

Are You Impressed?

Journalism is a thrilling job. But while it’s full of adventure, it can also prove challenging, especially when it comes to the confidentiality of journalistic sources. This key aspect of the job poses moral and ethical dilemmas.

In Quebec and the rest of Canada, this sacrosanct principle of confidentiality is enshrined in law. Put plainly, it protects the identity of journalistic sources, since journalists are often required to grant their sources anonymity to obtain sensitive and confidential information.

Eric and I had struck this type of deal with Andrea Andrew Scoppa. At no time would we reveal the identity of the Mafia boss who had made the decision to break the oath of omertà and become our informant.

However, two months before he was killed, we asked him straight out what we should do with the contents of his confessions in the event of his death.

You do what you have to do, he told us with a grin.

Clearly, the decision of whether to publish his story and identity would lie with us.

---

Much like my colleague Eric Thibault, who spent his childhood in Gaspésie, I grew up far from the hustle and bustle of Montreal, in a village of 2,500 people in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by organized crime, the police and international news. Even as a kid, I never complained when we watched the 6:00 news rather than children’s shows like Passe-Partout. The popular films that kids my age watched left me largely indifferent. Without realizing it, I had what it took to be a journalist: I always wanted to find out more.

Though I never watched any films in the Star Wars saga, I can faithfully recall multiple episodes of the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a remake of the eponymous TV program that aired in the early 1960s. The show, which featured police investigations interspersed with mystery and suspense, was a refuge where I could put myself in the lead investigator’s shoes.

In the 1980s, unlike all my friends, I never read through any Choose Your Own Adventure books, though not for lack of trying. By contrast, I can clearly recollect entire paragraphs of multiple books about Wilbert Coffin, a Gaspé prospector convicted and hanged in 1956 for the murders of three American hunters. I must have borrowed former senator Jacques Hébert’s J’accuse les assassins de Coffin from the library at least ten times.

My first encounter with the Mafia also came through books. I remember the exact moment it began. In my village, there was a corner store that sold the true crime magazine Dossier Meurtre. I was a passionate collector and would wait impatiently for the next issue to come out. Ted Bundy, Albert DeSalvo, the Butcher of Plainfield . . . I admit it made for pretty morbid reading material for a young teenage boy. In addition to all these serial killers, there was an entire issue dedicated to Al Capone, the boss of the Chicago Mafia, or Outfit.

Capone, Gotti, Gambino, Cotroni, Rizzuto . . . bit by bit, the lives of these Mafia figures, made larger than life through the lens of TV and newspapers, began to capture my interest. I started buying heaps of books on the subject. Today, my library contains several dozen books about the Mafia.

Little wonder that in the early 2000s, I started covering traditional Italian-based organized crime, which the police refer to by the acronym TOC (COTI in French). Montreal was then dominated by the clan headed by godfather Vito Rizzuto. He was at the height of his power as the province of Quebec and the city of Montreal were beginning to pick up the pieces from the Quebec Biker War.

I’d always written my crime stories using documents and police sources. Though I did my best, I wanted to find out more and understand better. The vast majority of the Italian-Canadians who had grown up in the LaSalle, Saint-Léonard and Park Extension neighbourhoods had contributed to the province’s success; why, then, had a few dozen individuals chosen to live lives straight out of a gangster movie? Did their lives resemble that of Vito Corleone, portrayed by Marlon Brando in the first film of The Godfather trilogy, or that of Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas? Maybe neither.

I needed to get inside the heads of those who led lives of crime. I had a visceral desire to find out who they really were and how they thought. I admit they held a certain kind of fascination for me.

In the fall of 2014, our Bureau d’enquête — an investigative unit of Quebecor journalists tasked with investigating and breaking major news stories — was in its second year of operation. Quebec had just wrapped up its Commission of Inquiry on the Awarding and Management of Public Contracts in the Construction Industry, more commonly known as the Charbonneau Commission. After 261 days of hearings and 292 witnesses, the commission had begun to expose the Mafia’s infiltration of the construction industry.

I needed a source so I could dig even deeper and document organized crime’s infiltration of the legal economy more accurately. In other words, I wanted to get up close and personal with those corrupting the system. I therefore set about recruiting a source from within the Mafia. If I were to succeed — if a meeting were to take place — I would be sure to glean plenty of information essential to my work as a journalist. In addition, I could satisfy a 30-year fascination.

The person who helped me recruit this source was a former police officer with the SPVM’s homicide squad. He knew a prominent Montreal criminal who had helped the police with several cases by tipping them off. This ex-cop, it should be mentioned, wanted to give me a behind-the-scenes look at Montreal police work. If this works out, it’s going to blow your mind! he told me. I gathered that the two men shared the same doctor and could pass each other messages through him.

I was surprised that the world of the police and the world of the Mafia were so closely intertwined. I’d expected my gateway into this world to be someone from the criminal underworld itself. But it was a member of the force who told me, Talk to Andrew. He knows things, he talks a lot, he has things to say. The police officers who advised me to reach out to him didn’t always do things the traditional way. That was my first big surprise: that a cop made all the arrangements for me to meet one of the biggest mobsters in Canada! From the way they talked about Andrew, he was someone they knew because they’d spoken often in recent years. They seemed to trust him; it wasn’t a trap awaiting me.

In early October 2014, one of my phones rang. At the time, I had three cell phones, since the journalists and our bosses at the Bureau d’enquête were afraid of being spied on. It was amid this somewhat paranoid atmosphere that the ex-policeman called me.

You’re good to go. He wants to do it at a hotel. Get yourself a room and call me back. It has to be tomorrow.

I talked to my bosses, booked the hotel room and called the cop back.

Let me know how it goes, he said with what sounded like a smile.

The next morning, I was behind the wheel of a white Dodge van in Montreal’s south end. Several days earlier, the vehicle’s TVA logos had been removed. I parked behind the construction site office for the new District Griffin condo tower, at the corner of Peel and Wellington. If anyone saw me, I could claim to be house hunting in Griffintown. The one-time industrial neighbourhood was experiencing a full-fledged real estate boom, with plans to build 15,000 residential units. Around me rose multiple new condo buildings. I calmly made my way to Industria Italian Restaurant. Ironically, some years later, I would learn that the place was popular among people with ties to Italian organized crime. Sinking even deeper into cliché, I ordered a tomato and bocconcini appetizer and a plate of prosciutto and melon to go. If he shows up, at least I can offer him something to eat, I clearly remember thinking. I figured it was a form of courtesy that would help me establish an initial rapport. I was wrong.

Industria was located on the ground floor of the Alt Hotel, a building with 154 rooms and 188 residential units. I’d paid $219 to book a room in my name, a worthwhile investment if this meeting went ahead. I asked the employee to give me one room key and keep the other at the reception desk: a man named Scott would be paying me a visit at 2 p.m., and I wouldn’t need the room for the night. The woman gave me a funny look, and I remember how funny that was, if not for the same reasons.

I went up to the room an hour before our meeting. I remember asking myself a thousand questions on the way. Would he be armed? Would he have a bodyguard? Would one of his enemies be lying in wait to kill him? If someone was out for his blood, would they also be out for mine if we were seen together?

The hotel was new, the rooms spacious and modern. As the architecture firm and project designer Lemay Michaud described it, exposed concrete featur[ed] prominently, from the columns in the public areas . . . to the exposed ceilings in the guest rooms. There was a certain dreariness about the place, but the atmosphere wasn’t the lightest to begin with. There was only one problem: the large windows did little to hide the goings-on in the apartments of the buildings opposite, which meant that the reverse was also true. I pulled the long cream-coloured curtains shut, stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The next hour felt like an eternity.

At exactly 2 p.m., there was a knock at the door. It was him: the source every journalist dreamed of having. The short man was armed and placed his gun on the table I’d moved between the bed and a chair.

Are you impressed? he asked with a broad grin.

Yes. Very much.

Before me was Andrew Scoppa: close confidant of the late godfather Vito Rizzuto, international heroin trafficker and cold-blooded killer. According to police sources, this Mafia clan leader was suspected of having a hand in no less than 15 murders.

Do you know how lucky you are? Many people would go fucking crazy to meet the Broom, he told me.

The Broom?

He explained it was a nickname he’d been given on the street because of a method he’d invented to get reluctant borrowers to pay up.

To be honest, I was somewhat surprised this man had received so much media coverage in recent years. He had little of the charisma that Vito Rizzuto exuded over his subjects. He was dressed simply: running shoes, jeans, a beige sweater, a blue coat and an Under Armour baseball cap fastened tightly around his head. He worked out often and told me so the first time we met.

Me, I train every fuckin’ day. Rain or shine, I fuckin’ train, you know, because a lot of shit is going on in my life right now, he said, holding his head in his hands.

Do you train? he asked me.

I told him I was a runner and was planning to complete my first marathon in two years.

Cardio isn’t good. You should stop, he replied bluntly. That he worked out was obvious: his beige sweater struggled to contain his biceps.

While Andrea Scoppa may not have been as dapper as Vito Rizzuto, he did have something in common with the godfather: an incredibly low tone of voice that lent gravity to his words. It was as though each time he finished a sentence, he wanted to make sure he’d been heard and understood so as not to have to repeat himself. Like most Montreal mobsters, he spoke an English that resembled that of Tony Soprano, the protagonist of the American TV show The Sopranos.

When I offered to share the tomato and bocconcini and plate of prosciutto