November 23, 2020 – Montreal underworld figure Shane (Wheels) Maloney was granted a full parole this week after serving eight years for drug and firearms offenses. The 43-year old wheelchair-bound Irish wiseguy says he will be moving to British Columbia. Wheels Maloney was a leader of Montreal’s Irish mob, known locally as The West End Gang, in the late 2000s who attempted to consolidate drug scales in Quebec in the aftermath of the Great Quebec Biker War with the so-called Wolfpack Alliance. Maloney was given day-parole in December 2019. He is the son of slain West End Gang boss Frank (Dunny) Ryan, killed in November 1984 by an angry lieutenant of his when Wheels was just six years old. When he was 20 years old, Maloney was paralyzed from the waist down in a snowmobile accident. According to Royal Canadian Mounted Police records, Maloney invested money he recovered in an insurance settlement into building his large-scale cocaine distribution network. The West End Gang has operated in Montreal for decades and today, is alleged to be led by the Matticks brothers. Maloney was part of the “New Millennium Generation” in the gang per prosecutors in his case, a group eager to forge relationships with outside criminal factions, like the bikers, the Haitians and the Italian mafia. Maloney’s dad, Dunny Ryan, was the first West Ender to open the door to doing business with other organizations and is credited with creating the blueprint Maloney and his allies in the gang implemented.
