Gregory Wooley, 36, a former bodyguard to Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, was arrested on Thursday

Gregory Wooley, 36, a former bodyguard to Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, was arrested on Thursday in his prison cell in Kingston, Ont. Arrest of a jailed biker in a crackdown on an alleged drug-trafficking ring involving outlaw bikers and street gangs shows the strong ties between the two criminal elements, one expert said today.Police in Quebec and Ontario have described this week's Operation Axe as a major blow against the drug-trafficking operations of the Hells Angels and one of their affiliated street gangs known as the Syndicate.
The arrests serve to remind people that street gangs, which are plaguing several Canadian cities, are established players in the criminal world, said author Julian Sher.

"Street gangs are not about a couple of rough-and-tough kids having a bad night out on the town," said Sher, who has co-authored a book on the Hells Angels.

"This (police operation) shows how tightly connected some of the most powerful street gangs are to organized crime."
The Crown said Wooley, one of 54 people nabbed on Thursday and Friday, is believed to be the first person in Canada to be charged with gangsterism a second time.
If he is convicted on the same charge again, Wooley's sentence would run consecutively to his current one. He has been in prison since 2000.Others arraigned Friday include Jean Lavertue, 34, a former Canadian Olympic weightlifter who operated a Montreal gym. He was charged with drug trafficking and gangsterism.
Police also arrested Fernand Lauzon, 67, a man identified as the father of a Montreal police officer. He was charged with drug trafficking.The Crown handed over an imposing amount of evidence on five compact discs that include hundreds of thousands of wiretapped conversations, said prosecutor Francis Cloutier.The Hells Angels, which led a bloody turf war over drugs in the 1990s, are still very much a player despite the aftermath of Operation Springtime, another mass police sweep in 2001, Sher said.While more than 100 people were put behind bars after 2001, Sher said there are roughly the same number of Hells members on the streets in Quebec and that national membership is stable at about 450.

"But the Hells Angels are a lot less cocky than they were, they're not strutting, they're not as confident, they don't know where the next infiltration is coming from," said Sher.

Eighteen of the accused were granted bail on Friday under very strict conditions including a large cash deposit, strict curfews, and restricted use of pagers and cell phones except for work.But the majority were detained pending future bail hearings, including three men identified as high-ranking members of the Syndicate.Cloutier said at least 17 people face gangsterism charges."Principally, the charges are trafficking for the profit of a criminal organization – trafficking of drugs," Cloutier said.Two people are also charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but only one of them has been arrested.Montreal police said Friday that more people had been nabbed, bringing the total to 54, including six women. But not everyone had been arraigned.About 700 officers from a number of police forces took part in Operation Axe, which Montreal police said was one of the biggest ever carried out by the city forceThe raids netted $675,000 in cash as well as 25 guns and a number of bullet-proof vests. Significant quantities of cocaine, crack, ecstasy, marijuana and hashish were seized along with other drugs including speed, Viagra and steroids.

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Paul Fontaine is charged with first degree murder for the 1997 killing of prison guard Pierre Rondeau

Paul Fontaine is charged with first degree murder for the 1997 killing of prison guard Pierre Rondeau. The guard was killed during an ambush of a prison bus in the east end of Montreal. The principal witness in the case, Stephane "Godasse" Gagne, was also involved in the crime, making it a difficult deliberation for the jury. Gagne pleaded guilty to charge of murder related to the death of Diane Lavigne, a prison security guard who was killed a few weeks earlier than Rondeau. He was able to plea bargin out of the charges for the murder of Rondeau. Initially it was believed the killing of the guards was intended to destabilize the justice system. However, it was revealed in court that the killings were also ordered to test the loyalty of Fontaine, Gagne and others.
The jury has been sequestered since Tuesday evening.

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Giovanni Marra is one of two reputed members of the Montreal Mafia who have seen their parole revoked

Last year, Gallo, 62, serving a life sentence for taking part in a 1973 murder, halted his parole hearing because he was unwilling to discuss the evidence - which includes videotapes of him bringing large quantities of cash to Mafia leaders at their hangout in St. Léonard - with the possibility of new charges hanging over his head.In the 1980s and 1990s, Giovanni Marra helped Montreal mob boss Frank Cotroni move a lot of cocaine. Then after being released on parole in 2001 while serving a 14-year prison term for drug trafficking, Marra appeared to go on the straight and narrow and became a leading salesman at a car dealership.But it is his alleged penchant for selling the former that has seen Marra returned to a federal penitentiary where he was turned down for a new chance at parole last week.
According to a summary of the National Parole Board decision, the RCMP suspects Marra was again acting as a middleman in a conspiracy to import and traffic in cocaine.Marra, 55, is one of two reputed members of the Montreal Mafia who have seen their parole revoked because of evidence gathered during Projet Colisée, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation that ended in 2006 with about 90 arrests.Both Marra and Moreno Gallo have yet to be charged in connection with Projet Colisée. The evidence mostly involves them associating with known criminals, a violation of conditions they agreed to when released.Marra went through with his hearing on Thursday and told the two parole commissioners who heard his case that the meetings he had with other known criminals while out on parole were "innocent get-togethers." The parole board simply didn't believe him.Marra has two previous convictions for drug trafficking besides the sentence he is currently serving. In 1978, he received his first conviction and was sentenced to three years in a case heard in the United States.Four years later, he was arrested in Montreal after Réal Simard, a hitman for Cotroni, turned informant and told police he and Marra sold a kilo of cocaine together.In 1996, Marra and Cotroni, who died of brain cancer in 2004 at 72, were arrested in connection with a plot to smuggle 180 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. Marra quickly pleaded guilty in the case, but still received a stiff 14-year prison term because he was the key intermediary between the Colombian suppliers and Cotroni.Marra was released on parole five years later after swearing he had severed his ties to the Mafia and doing volunteer work at a shelter for abused women. After being released, he complained for years that one of his conditions - forbidding him from visiting bars - was limiting his ability to sell cars. The parole board finally agreed to modify the condition in 2006.Investigators now believe Marra used the opportunity to meet with other mobsters in bars.

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Montreal Mafia :(update)Nicolo Rizzuto, Paolo Renda, Rocco Sollecito, Francesco Arcadi, Lorenzo Giordino

New court documents allege cocaine-importing conspiracies that had ramifications in Montreal, Laval, Boucherville, Toronto and other places in Canada, as well as in the United States, Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica, Colombia, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
As for the sixth presumed leader, Francesco Del Balso, he accepted before Christmas to be tried alone on the same charges as the other five.
For the 38 others who are accused of being linked to the drug importation ring working out of Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Aiport, their preliminary hearing will begin on Feb. 4 at a large courtroom in northeast Montreal built specifically for mega-trials.
All were rounded up during a large police sweep on Montreal's Italian Mafia in late 2006.
During the raid, which was dubbed Projet Colisee, police were able to seize 800 kilograms of cocaine, 40 kilograms of marijuana, $3.5 million cash and $3 million worth of real estate.

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