Was restaurateur killed over someone else’s debt?
Paolo Caputo was eager to sell his wine bar in Toronto’s west end on Roncesvalles Avenue, near Grenadier Road.
Caputo wanted $249,000 for it, which seemed a reasonable price for the Domani, 3,486 square feet and fully air-conditioned.
“Renovated restaurant located in Roncesvalles Village,” a listing posted by Caputo in the summer of 2019 read. “Totally turnkey with a full kitchen and walk-in cooler. Currently serving Italian cuisine. Can easily convert to any cuisine.”
It wasn’t clear why 64-year-old Caputo wanted to make the deal. Did he need the cash? Was he just tired? Did he want to lower his profile? Was he thinking about his younger brother Martino Caputo and the changing organized crime landscape in the GTA?
It had been a few years since Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto was a regular at Paolo Caputo’s nowclosed Forest Hill restaurant. Rizzuto had been considered the top man in the Canadian underworld until he died of natural causes in December 2013.
Caputo was a gambler himself, and was arrested in November 2007 with dozens of other men after police raided what they called a high stakes poker game held behind locked doors at a social club on Finch Avenue West near Dufferin Street.
Times had changed dramatically in the GTA underworld since Rizzuto’s death.
Since then, Caputo’s younger brother Martino Caputo had become tightly tied with the Wolfpack Alliance, a multi-ethnic group with links to a variety of organized crime groups across the country.
It includes a bit of everybody in the underworld, including a few mob figures and bikers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, making them much younger than the old-school criminals atop most GTA Mafia groups.
They display computer skills, a profound sense of entitlement, and impatience over things like unpaid debts and unresolved grievances.
By the time the Domani went up for sale, Martino Caputo was serving a life sentence as one of four men connected to the Wolfpack who were convicted of first-degree murder for killing their former partner, John Raposo, 35, of Toronto.
Raposo was shot dead in broad daylight by a Wolfpack hit man disguised as a construction worker while watching Euro Cup soccer on TV on a crowded College Street patio in June 2012.
Even after the conviction of the Wolfpack men, a serious question lingered about Raposo’s murder: What happened to the $5 million in cocaine the Wolfpack was smuggling from Chicago through Buffalo into the GTA with Raposo?
That cocaine had been fronted by the Sinaloa cartel, meaning they hadn’t been paid yet. The Sinaloa cartel is infamous for taking its property — and reputation — extremely seriously.
The massive debt wasn’t nullified just because the men involved in the deal were either in prison for murder or murdered, like Raposo.
According to police and underworld sources, the cartel had grown frustrated with repeated attempts to collect on the $5 million debt.
In gentler times, not so long ago, they might have kidnapped someone to speed up the payment. Now murder was more the norm.
Modern cartels are “more ruthless and cruel than before,” organized crime expert Luis Horacio Najera said in an interview.
Najera is a Mexican investigative journalist who escaped to Canada more than a decade ago after his life was threatened for his reporting on drug cartels.
Millennials in Canada and outside the country are the changing the face of organized crime, Najera said
The new generation’s profound sense of impatience is reflected by rapid change within Mexico’s cocaine cartels, Najera said. There were seven cartels in the country in 2000, but that had ballooned to 12 major cartels and 50 smaller ones by 2019.
Shortly after 4 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 16, 2019, Paolo Caputo stepped outside the Domani onto the sidewalk.
A thin male with a fair complexion, who stood between five-foot-11 and six-foot-two, appeared and fired two shots at him. Caputo was dead on the pavement.
The killer fled into a waiting white, four-door SUV, possibly an older Mercedes-Benz B300 model, which was driven by someone else and fled westbound on Constance Street. A gun was found near Caputo’s body.
Caputo may have been shot dead to send a message to others who didn’t pay their debts. It didn’t get back the $5 million, but it did make a loud statement about the dangers of outstanding debts.
“In the underworld of crime, if someone doesn’t pay and you don’t collect that debt, it is perceived as a sign of weakness,” Najera said. “Depending on the risk/power of the debtor, the collection may take longer than just a couple of weeks, but eventually it will be a reaction for sure.”
Najera said cartels are already contracting out murders inside Canada.
“There are hit men available inside Canada to conduct businesses for the criminal groups in Mexico,” Najera said. “Furthermore, when those local hit men are hired, their ‘reputation’ increases as they add to their ‘resume’ being under contract for a Mexican group.”
A police source compared Paolo Caputo’s murder to the 1991 slaying of Thornhill resident Giovanni Costa, 38. Costa was not a criminal, but he was shot dead to punish family members who were involved in an ongoing feud between criminal ’Ndrangheta groups in Canada and Italy, court in Italy later heard.
Earlier that year, Costa’s deafmute brother Vincenzo Costa was murdered while cycling in Calabria. Neither Giovanni nor Vincenzo Costa were considered criminals.
Paolo Caputo’s murder remains unsolved.
The massive debt wasn’t nullified just because the men involved in the deal were either in prison for murder or murdered. The cartel had grown frustrated with repeated attempts to collect the $5 million