Gangster who fell from grace in Montreal killed in Acapulco

Borderland Beat

The 68-year-old one-time player in the crime network run by Vito Rizzuto was shot dead Sunday night at an Italian restaurant in Acapulco. Dressed in white slacks and a pink shirt, Mr. Gallo was dining with friends at a restaurant named Forza Italia when a man dressed in black shot him several times in the head with a 9mm pistol, according to local media reports.

Ten years ago, Mr. Gallo was touted as the potential replacement godfather of the Montreal Mob, but his star faded with stints in prison and the threat of expulsion from Canada. La Presse newspaper reported Monday that he also picked the wrong side in a power struggle for control of the city.

Mr. Gallo was from the Calabrian clan that ran Montreal into the late 1970s. When the Sicilian Rizzutos rose to power, they incorporated several survivors, Mr. Gallo among them, from the ranks of their former Calabrian enemies.

In their book Mafia Inc., crime writers André Cédilot and André Noël say Mr. Gallo was tabbed as a potential Rizzuto clan leader in the early 2000s, and police affidavits name him as part of an inner circle that handled the family’s money and settled disputes over drug territory.

Evidence filed in court showed Mr. Gallo was one of a handful of gang members who paid tribute to the Rizzutos at their hangout Café Cosenza. In 2005, RCMP investigators videotaped family patriarch Nicolo Rizzuto stuffing wads of cash into his socks, and Mr. Gallo provided a two-inch wad of cash for the stuffing.

The video is now part of Mafia lore in Montreal, but it was also key evidence. Mr. Gallo, an Italian immigrant and permanent resident of Canada who was convicted of a drug murder in 1974, was on permanent parole. The video was enough for Canadian authorities to expel him in 2012.
Gallo once considered to be an ally of the Rizzuto crime family but had fallen out of favor with the clan following the death of patriarch Nicolo Rizzuto. It is believed that Gallo sided with fellow mobster Joseph Di Maulo who was murdered last November in an attempt to wrestle control of the Montreal underworld from the Rizzuto family. The alliance formed to take down the Rizzuto’s is believed to have also included former Bonanno family boss from New York Salvatore Montagna killed in 2011 and Montreal mobster Raynald Desjardins imprisoned for murder of Montagna. This break away faction from the Rizzuto family was believed to have been backed by the Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia. Before the take down of the Rizzuto’s could be completed the alliance of mobsters had an internal feud and turned on each other leading to death of Montagna.

The Rizzuto family hit hard times with the imprisonment of Vito Rizzuto in 2004 and many remaining bosses in 2006. An ensuing war killed off several important family members, including Vito Rizzuto’s father and son, both named Nicolo Rizzuto.

By 2010, Salvatore (Sal the Ironworker) Montagna, a New York mobster, was trying to seize control of Montreal. Mr. Gallo was among the former Rizzuto stalwarts who rallied to his side, according to La Presse.

Mr. Montagna was gunned down in November, 2011. Gangster Raynald Desjardins and others are awaiting trial for murder. Mr. Gallo was deported two months later. Several crime reporters in Montreal, citing unnamed police and underworld sources, have recently declared that Vito Rizzuto, out of jail since 2012, is back in firm control of Montreal.

Mexico says:

In relation to the murder of an Italian, that occurred Sunday night in Acapulco, the Attorney General of Guerrero reported that through the Regional Office, forensic investigations had already carried out the preliminary investigation and have interviewed associates of the victim in their various fields, among others, sentimental, working and friendly.

PGJE prosecutor assigned to the Regional Prosecution also initiated investigation in the field criminalistics, ballistics and forensic photography  where the crime was committed, at an Italian restaurant located on Avenida Costera Miguel Aleman .

According to the statements of several eyewitnesses, were two men who entered the restaurant shortly after 22:00 pm Sunday and one of them pulled out a pistol from his waist and fired repeatedly into the deceased who was hit in the back and head.

The PGJE has contacted the Italian Consulate in Mexico for the repatriation of the body of the victim and to return it to its home country, meanwhile, they will be conducting investigations with interviews by experts in the field to achieve identify, and tolocate and arrest the alleged perpetrators.

Meanwhile Canadian newspapers identified the victim as Moreno Gallo, 68 years old, a character who became the head of the Italian mafia in the east coast of Canada in the seventies.

Linked to the Rizzuto clan, Gallo was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a drug dealer in 1975.

Gallo claimed self defense, but the prosecutor said was actually a reckoning for the control of illegal Montreal enterprises.

In the seventies, in Canada he was convicted of murder. At the end of a long losing legal battle to avoid deportation, he was expelled from Canada in January  2012.


According to the waiters of the restaurant where he was killed for at least a year Gallo was steady customer of that place.

CBC News has confirmed that Moreno Gallo, once an influential member of the Montreal Mafia, was killed Sunday in Acapulco, Mexico.

The information comes from the judicial authorities in the Mexican state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located.

Montreal Mob boss Nicolo Rizzuto was gunned down in his home exactly three years ago on Sunday.

The 68-year-old Gallo was deported in January 2012 for his ties to organized crime and had been lobbying the Canadian government for re-entry. According to the Canada Border Services Agency, Gallo had been found guilty of several offences including a premeditated murder.

Other media reports say he was shot and killed while dining at Forza Italia, a restaurant in Acapulco. The Italian man had settled there after being expelled from Canada.
He was well-known in organized crime circles in Montreal, even if he wasn’t well-known in the public realm.


Mexican authorities are expected to confirm more details about Gallo’s death later.

Thanks to Chivis for the additional  crime scene photo.

Sources: Voz, cbc, globe, aboutthemafia