How the Sinaloa Cartel gained a foothold in Canada
by Anton Bueckert
Yes, it’s true. The Sinaloa Cartel is now active in Canada.
The information that follows is mostly drawn from a book called The Wolfpack - The Millennial Mobsters who brought Chaos and the Cartels to Canada’s Underworld, which was co-written by two veteran crime reporters.
This book focuses on a short-lived criminal organization called the Wolfpack Alliance, an alliance between the Hells Angels and two multiethnic B.C.-based gangs - the Red Scorpions and the Independent Soldiers.
It also included at least one person associated with Montreal’s West End Gang, also known as the Irish Mob.
The Wolfpack Alliance began importing cocaine from the Sinaloa Cartel, allowing that organization to gain a foothold in Canada.
Before getting into the weeds, however, I think that it is worth saying something about the book’s two authors.
WHO IS PETER EDWARDS?
Peter Edwards is one of Canada’s top crime reporters. If you have heard of him, it is likely as the author of Business or Blood, which went on to inspire the Netflix series Bad Blood.
Business or Blood, which was co-written by Mafia expert Anthony Nicaso, tells the story of the power struggle that began when Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto was arrested in 2004 and subsequently extradited to the U.S.
WHO IS LUIS HORACIO NAJERA?
Luis Horacio Najera is a veteran Mexican crime reporter who calls himself a “journalist in exile”. After receiving death threats from cartels, he moved his family to Canada in the hopes of leaving the drug war behind him. It wasn’t long before he realized that cartels were also active in Canada, though, and he decided to begin reporting on organized crime in his new homeland.
WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THEM?
The authors of The Wolfpack assert with total certainty that the Sinaloa Cartel is now active in Canada, which leads to an obvious question - why should we believe them?
Well, not only are they both highly qualified veteran crime reporters, they are also drawing on a wealth of hard evidence from numerous police investigations.
The authors explain:
We benefited from evidence presented in the trial of Rabih Alkhalil, Martino Caputo, Nick Nero and Dean Michael Wiwchar for the murder of Johnny Raposo. The case against Alkhalil, Caputo, Nero and Wiwchar drew from 41,420 intercepted calls made in a three-month period on a total of eighteen cellphone lines, three land lines and seven probes in cars and homes.
Peter Edwards also attended the trials of multiple members of the Wolfpack Alliance and drew on “not-for-attribution” interviews with gang members and law enforcement.
We also have particularly good information on the Wolfpack due to the sloppy security practices of one of its members.
WHO WERE THE WOLFPACK ALLIANCE?
The Wolfpack Alliance represented a new type of criminal organization, one that did not exist before the advent of the internet.
Although it began in the Lower Mainland of B.C., it was not tied to a specific geographic area, and its members were mostly uninterested in controlling any given territory.
At no point did the Wolfpack have a top-down chain of command, and is best thought of as a loose alliance of members of different gangs.
Unlike most gangs of yesteryear, the Wolfpack was multiethnic - it included Arabs, Iranians, Euro-Canadians, and people of other ethnicities. Its mostly Millennial-aged members were united primarily by greed, recklessness, and ambition.
It is notable that the Hells Angels has historically limited full membership to white men, although there has always been some wiggle room in this regard. Nevertheless, the Hells continue to be linked to white supremacist prison gangs such as the Aryan Nation. The multiethnic nature of the Wolfpack is a sign that times have changed.
In an interview with Scott Burnstein of the Original Gangster Podcast, Peter Edwards
It’s odd. We’re moving into the time of the woke gangster… They’ll shoot people and brag about it, but they won’t use a racial slur.
Although the Wolfpack Alliance did not have an official leader, its most influential member was a Palestinian-born named Rabih Alkhalil. Other notable members included Larry Amero of the Langley chapter of the Hells Angels, Niagara-based coke dealer Nick Nero, and Shane Kenneth Maloney of Montreal’s West End Gang (also known as the Irish Mob).
Who is Rabih Alkhalil?
Rabih Alkhalil is a Palestinian-born gangster whose family moved to Canada when he was a child. His family settled in Surrey, B.C., a notoriously violent Vancouver suburb.
He is the youngest of four brothers, all of whom were involved in that city’s violent drug trade from a young age and were involved in a long-running feud with another gang known as the Dhak-Duhre group.
Three of the Alkhalil brothers have been murdered and two are currently in hiding.
Who is Larry Amero?
Larry Amero was a member of the Hells Angels. He began his career with the outlaw biker club at their White Rock charter before starting a new charter in Langley, B.C. Both White Rock and Langley are municipalities in B.C.’s Lower Mainland, close to Vancouver.
He is pictured her with Randy Naicker, the founder of the Independent Soldiers, who was shot to death in 2012.
Note the prominent Hells Angels tattoo on his abdomen.
He owned a speedboat which he named Steroids & Silicone, which should give you an idea about the type of person he is.
In 2001, Caputo was arrested as part of a police investigation into what was described by the journalists Jodee Brown and Ron Wadden as "a Mafia-led illegal gambling ring that yielded more than $200 million in sports bets through Internet links, store-front businesses and high-tech gadgets".On 9 November 2002, the Crown dropped the charges against Caputo as a part of a plea bargain where the leader of the gambling ring, Dario Zanetti, pledged guilty to bookmaking and paid a $300,000 fine.
Caputo was close to Pietro Scarcella and upon his recommendation started to work with Nick Nero, a criminal whom Scarcella had met while he was in prison when Nero was released on parole in November 2009.Caputo started to date Tamara Fletcher, the identical twin sister of Tawnya Bel Fletcher, the fiancée of Nero.
Were it not for the fact that the story of the Wolfpack involved multiple murders, it would be comical.
According to Edwards and Najera:
Nobody had pegged Nick Nero for great things when he was growing up in Niagara Falls, as he was neither book nor street smart. He wasn’t particularly athletic or good-looking. “He never really fit in,” a former schoolmate said, describing him as “dumb as a bag of hair.”
That said, Nero did have plenty of ambition and daring, and as one look at his tightly drawn face made clear, he possessed a deep inner pool of anger to fuel him. He channelled his rage into bodybuilding, adding stacks of muscle onto his squatty figure, especially his once sunken chest.
It is thanks to Nick Nero that we have such a wealth of information about the Wolfpack.
When police raided his home, they hit the jackpot that would quickly become the stuff of legends.
Inside the Niagara condo, police noticed something that would define Nero in criminal circles from that day forward. Sitting in plain view on the marble countertop, beside a screen-locked BlackBerry, was a bright yellow sticky note. Written on it were the e-mail address “Cervezafrya@encryptroid.com” and the password “sharp0,” which allowed him to communicate with the Wolfpack and the Sinaloa Cartel free from outside eyes. It was almost too good—or dumb—to believe.
THE RAPOSO MURDER
Many murders can be traced to two emotions: jealousy and greed. In the case of the murder of Johnny Raposo, it appears that both factors were at play.
In 2012, Raposo, Nero, Alkhalil and Caputo joined forces to import a large shipment of cocaine into Toronto. Their source was the Sinaloa Cartel and the value of the load was about $5 million. It had been agreed that the profits from the sale of the cocaine were to be split equally four ways.
Raposo agreed to enter into the alliance with Nero and Alkhalil because he trusted Caputo, a mistake that would cost him his life. Around the same time that Caputo was attending the baptism of Raposo’s son, he was sharing information about his supposed friend with a hitman.
His motive was jealousy. It is pretty incredible how incestuous the Wolfpack Alliance was.
According to Edwards and Najera:
Caputo was dating Tamara Fletcher, the identical twin sister of Tawnya Fletcher (Nero's fiancée). Raposo lived with his common-wife.However, both Caputo and Raposo had a mistress on the side, who happened to be the same woman.
Caputo became jealous of Raposo, and as he wanted the affections of his mistress all to himself, decided that Raposo had to be killed.Caputo used Nero as his instrument for disposing of his romantic rival Raposo. Caputo in his texts to Nero expressed much hatred of Raposo as made numerous disparaging remarks about him from April 2012 onward and promoted the thesis that Raposo was an informer.
Edwards and Najera make it clear that there is no evidence that Raposo actually was an informer.
On the afternoon of 18 June 2012, Raposo gunned down at his favourite coffee shop by a hitman named Dean Wiwchar, who was hired by Alkhalil.
Later that same day, Caputo showed up at Raposo’s home to offer his sympathy to his wife, reportedly telling his son “Buddy, that’s why you’ve got to stay in school.”
Things then went from bad to worse.
THE WOLFPACK ALLIANCE’S COCAINE SHIPMENT GOES MISSING
The $5 million cocaine shipment arrive in a Toronto junkyard as scheduled, but then promptly went missing.
According Edwards and Najera, it “was stolen by an unknown person before Caputo and Alkhalil received it.”
The Sinaloa Cartel were reportedly furious, as the Wolfpack had received the load on consignment. Threatened to send up killers from Mexico to torture and murder all of the Wolfpack for their incompetence.
The Mexican gangsters were especially angry at Caputo, who was supposed to send someone to pick up the cocaine.
Caputo fled Canada in the summer of 2012. A warrant for Caputo's arrest was issued in November of year. On 16 February 2013, he was arrested in Europe and subsequently deported to Canada.
He then stood trial for numerous crimes including cocaine trafficking and first-degree murder. He is currently serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole of 25 years.
