November 8, 2019 — Toronto mobster Antonio (Scratchy) Fiorda was gunned down this week in the suburb of Etobicoke, Ontario. The 50-year old Fiorda is the latest victim in the ongoing gangland war that has engulfed the Canadian underworld this past decade. He was murdered Thursday afternoon in broad daylight in the parking lot of Via Allegro, an upscale Italian restaurant across the street from the busy Sherway Gardens mall known for its giant wine cellar and as a popular meeting spot for wiseguys. There have been nine slayings tied to the war just this year alone. The conflict started in Montreal in the late 2000s and has since spread to Ontario. Mafia figure Paolo Caputo was killed in Toronto in August. Scratchy Fiorda was a member of the Commisso crime family, a branch of the Calabrian mafia (‘Ndrangheta) operating in Toronto and also worked with the Buffalo mob’s regime in Hamilton. His nickname came from his gravelly-sounding voice. The Commisso crime family is headed by Cosimo (The Quail) Commisso, whose nephew was slain in the war back in the summer of 2018. Fiorda was one of Commisso’s top enforcers and loansharks and did a stint in prison for a 1996 arrest on possession of illegal guns and explosives. He was nabbed for extortion in 2004 and nailed for assault several months later. Per police records, he often acted as security for some of the provinces’ most powerful players in the mafia and was known to be a liaison to local biker gangs. More recently, Forida has been tied to the Buffalo mob’s Violi brothers (Dom and Joe), who run the Magaddino crime family’s Canadian wing. Dom Violi is allegedly the family’s underboss. Paolo Caputo, 64, died in a hail of bullets in front of his Domani Restaurant on Roncesvalles Avenue. He was aligned with deceased Montreal mob don Vito Rizzuto. The imprisonment of Rizzuto for a notorious 1981 triple homicide in New York depicted in the classic mob movie Donnie Brasco sent the mafia in Canada into a tailspin it still has yet to recover from. While he was behind bars, Rizzuto’s father, son and brother-in-law were all murdered. Rizzuto, 67, died of an aggressive bout with cancer in December 2013, a little more than a year after he was released from an American prison and returned to Montreal intent on exacting revenge on his enemies.
