Iced by Stephen Schneider

Author:Stephen Schneider
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2016-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Q:

From Canada?

Valachi:

Yes.

Q:

He is a member of another family though?

Valachi:

In Canada.

Q:

The Buffalo family?

Valachi:

Buffalo and Canada is all one. When I say Canada, I mean Toronto.

Q:

He was not a member of the Genovese Family?

Valachi:

He was a member of another family in Buffalo, Stephen Magaddino.

Alberto Agueci

Illustration by Ben Firsch

Through his contacts in Sicily, Alberto Agueci began bringing over small quantities of heroin into Canada, often sending his brother to make the purchases. Alberto’s Sicilian suppliers assured him they could get their hands on an endless supply of almost pure heroin from Corsican gangsters. Now all he needed was a larger market. The opportunity to supply the biggest heroin market in North America presented itself when Alberto was introduced to Vincent Mauro and his two lieutenants, Frank (Frankie the Bug) Caruso and Salvatore Rinaldo. All three men were made members of the Genovese Family, New York City’s most prolific heroin retailers at the time. Rinaldo, who would later turn state’s evidence and testify against his Canadian drug dealing colleagues, was working as a small-scale heroin distributor for Mauro in New York, but his suppliers were inconsistent and rarely had the large quantities he desired. The man who would bring Alberto Agueci and Vincent Mauro together and cement the relationship between supplier and distributor was none other than John Papalia. As two of the most prominent members of the Magaddino Family’s Canadian wing, Agueci and Papalia were close associates, having worked together on a number of scams in Ontario. One of their swindles was rigged bingo games where tiny printing presses that manufactured winning cards were smuggled into bingo halls. They also became partners in illegal gambling operations and liquor smuggling, and the two co-owned the highly profitable Star Vending Machine Company. Papalia was also close to Vincent Mauro (a.k.a. Vinnie Bruno), the heavy-set native of Greenwich Village who reported to Anthony Strollo, the Genovese underboss who oversaw the family’s heroin trafficking in New York.

In October 1958, Papalia introduced Alberto Agueci to Mauro, who then put Agueci in contact with Caruso and Rinaldo to work out the details of their fledgling heroin smuggling partnership. “I was told we were going to work together,” Rinaldo later told a New York City courtroom. “Agueci and Papalia would take care of their end in Canada and bring the stuff from Europe and we would take care of our end here.” Rinaldo told the court that the joint venture was hatched in March 1960, after fellow Genovese solider Joseph Valachi returned from Canada and proclaimed there was “so much junk in Canada it was laying around in bags.” The date provided by Rinaldo was perhaps a deliberate lie, although Valachi did spend a few days in Toronto under the care of Alberto Agueci and John Papalia in January 1960, while he was on the lam after being charged with drug trafficking in New York (while at Alberto Agueci’s Toronto home he received a phone call from Anthony Strollo ordering him back to New York to give himself up to police).

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