Latest news with #DiRienzo
CTV News
13 hours ago
- Sport
- CTV News
Father's Day celebrations across Ottawa
From spending the day in the sun to taking part in a charity hockey game, families in Ottawa stayed busy for Father's Day. CTV's Camille Wilson reports. From spending the day in the sun to taking part in a charity hockey game, families in Ottawa stayed busy for Father's Day. CTV's Camille Wilson reports. Fathers across the nation's capital were celebrating Father's Day on Sunday with their families. Some dads spent the day at the park enjoying a picnic and fun with their children. The event was put on by the Ottawa Italian Committee as the final event wrapped up the Italian Week festivities. 'We wanted to meld this tradition in Italy where during harvest times, people come together, neighbors come together, families come together to have picnics outside or enjoy a shared food and share community outdoors,' said Alexina McLeod, board member of Italian Week Ottawa. 'We thought it was a nice way to celebrate fathers and Italian culture and heritage at the same time.' Families got to enjoy Italian-style sandwiches from Di Rienzo, play lawn games and listen to Italian music. Father's Day The Moneta family enjoying a picnic in the park in Ottawa on Father's Day June 15, 2025. (Camille Wilson/CTV News Ottawa) 'There are not too many opportunities to spend time with the kids. They're always busy. Especially on such a nice day, it's a great time to be together,' said Fabio Moneta, enjoying the Father's Day picnic in the park with family. 'We love getting outside and it's such a beautiful day,' added Angela Howell-Moneta. 'We love to just try to be together without screens.' Spending quality time is what matters to most dads. Some in the park say they just wanted to keep the day simple. The Nepean Rookies hockey league held a dad and son or dad and daughter hockey game, to raise money for charity. 'With the economy the way it is, I figured the ones hardest hit are the ones that require charities and donations. We put on this event so all the funds today will go towards, the charity of everyone's choices. The main one that we're giving to is CHEO,' said John Cho, organizer for the Nepean Rookies. Father's Day Mario Guindon and his son Noah getting ready for a game of hockey. (Camille Wilson/CTV News Ottawa) Cho says he thought it would be a good time for everyone to enjoy their time with their dads or parental figures. 'What a better way to spend Father's Day than playing hockey with your son. It's great to share something we're both passionate about together,' said Derick Lalonde, a Nepean Rookie playing hockey with his son. 'I like playing hockey with my dad a lot. I play in my basement a lot with him,' said Arthur. 'It's fun to get together, play ice hockey with my son and being on the same ice,' added Mario Guindon. 'It's a good time to get together and share these moments together'
CBC
21-03-2025
- CBC
Surveillance, stakeouts and wiretaps: How police build cases against Montreal grandparent scam networks
Social Sharing CBC News is investigating grandparent scams and their links to Montreal. This story is part three of a three-part series. Read part one and two. Over the past four years, teams of police officers have arrested at least 50 people in the Montreal area who, they say, were involved in three elaborate grandparent scam networks that defrauded the elderly out of millions of dollars. Law enforcement officials say the number of grandparent scams grew during the COVID pandemic and they are only now starting to see fewer of them — a result, they say, of increased police action and arrests. But major enforcement operations that target larger networks and their leaders take time, effort and co-ordination between police forces. Court documents show that it takes hundreds of hours of surveillance, including stakeouts and wiretaps, to build a case against a major grandparent scam network. And it can take years to successfully prosecute a case against the alleged members of a scam network. Once the evidence has been collected, police raid the call centres and make arrests. But they don't charge the suspects yet. In most cases, when police have targeted grandparent scam networks in Montreal over the past four years, they have released the suspects after a raid and then charged them months or even more than a year later. WATCH | Why are so many grandparent scams linked to Montreal? Why Montreal is a hub for grandparent scammers — and what's being done to stop them 2 days ago Duration 3:01 Police have raided several major grandparent scam operations in Montreal in recent years, arresting scammers that allegedly bilked victims out of millions of dollars. We break down what we found out about the scams and who they impact. This is now standard practice and is due to court delays, police say. Prosecutors don't want their cases to be thrown out by a so-called Jordan ruling, which sets time limits for reasonable delays after which a case may be dismissed. One case involving a Montrealer named David Anthony Di Rienzo and a group of alleged accomplices has yet to go to trial despite the suspects being first arrested in March 2021. The group allegedly run by Di Rienzo exclusively targeted American seniors, according to a summary of the evidence against the group filed in court. Another Montreal-based group, allegedly run by an Ontarian named Gareth West, has been accused by American authorities of orchestrating a similar scam, also targeting American seniors. These scams also affect Canadians. More arrests leading to fewer cases One large police operation called Project Sharp, led by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), led to the arrests of 14 people in the Montreal-area in 2024. They are are accused of defrauding Canadian seniors out of more than $1.2 million. Cmdr. Steve Belzil, the head of the economic crimes division at the Service de Police de la ville de Montréal (SPVM), said Montreal police supported those investigations, helping the OPP and police in the U.S. to gather evidence and more. But he said the SPVM also performs its own investigations. Officers investigated more than 140 cases of grandparent scams in 2022, then 188 in 2023 and now, the number dropped to 121 cases in 2024. He said police action, including those larger investigations in which the SPVM played a role alongside the FBI and the OPP, are having an impact. "Is there an effect of the raids on numbers? I think so," he said. "What we're seeing in our investigations and from our partners is that there are lots of arrests happening in Montreal. We're there with our teams." Fraud cases are underreported Jeff Horncastle, a client and communications outreach officer at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), said in an interview that these operations appear to be having an effect on the grandparent scammers. Last year, the CAFC recorded a decrease in the amount of money that Canadians reported losing to grandparent scammers — down from $11.6 million in 2023 to $3.2 million in 2024. That decrease was "largely due to — from what we understand — a few arrests that were done [and] networks shut down," Horncastle said. The CAFC's numbers don't include money defrauded from Americans and people in other countries, however. A 2024 Nasdaq Verafin report found that one in 10 elderly Americans were targeted each year, to a tune of $77.7 billion US of reported global fraud. But even these numbers may not offer a full picture of the scale. Horncastle said fraud is one of the most underreported crimes. The CAFC estimates only five to 10 per cent of victims actually report their fraud to their organization. How to help Horncastle urged victims to report fraud to police — but also to the CAFC to help with nationwide tracking of scam networks. Court documents show that one of the ways scammers try to conceal their fraud is by varying the cities and regions they target. "The more information we have the better, so always remember that what you could be reporting could be the missing piece of the puzzle," Horncastle said. WATCH | What to do if you get a call demanding payment: How to protect your loved ones from 'grandparent scams' 2 years ago Duration 1:43 The CAFC also shares best practices for potential victims to protect themselves. The most important thing, Horncastle said, is to be skeptical. If a relative calls asking for money, say you'll call them back and use the number saved in your contacts. Belzil, the SPVM commander, emphasized the same point — to call your loved one to check if the request is real. "Always remember to validate," he said, "to call the person. Even if they [the scammers] say you shouldn't call." It can also be beneficial to have an emergency code word shared with your loved ones. "In a lot of reports and almost in every case, there's an inner voice. It's kind of screaming at you that something doesn't seem right with this," Horncastle said. "But due to the fact that they're playing with emotions, victims go through with it. If you listen to that inner voice and that instinct from the beginning, you could save yourself from being a victim."
CBC
19-03-2025
- CBC
Grandparent scams steal millions from seniors. Organized crime made Montreal a hotbed for them
CBC News is investigating grandparent scams and their link to Montreal. This story is part one of a three-part series. In June 2024, eight young men and women were working the phones inside a squat, two-storey building next to Lakeshore Road in Pointe-Claire, a suburb in Montreal's West Island, when police officers stormed in. In an indictment unsealed earlier this month, Michael Drescher, the district attorney of Vermont, said the group was caught in the act that day. They were placing phone calls to "elderly victims in Virginia," pretending to be their grandkids and asking for money. Drescher alleged that the group, and 17 other Canadians — nearly all from the Montreal area, and many from the West Island suburbs — was part of an elaborate international scam network that defrauded hundreds of American seniors out of a total of more than $21 million US. The indictment details how the group, and their alleged accomplices, performed a carefully choreographed fraud — known as a grandparent scam — at multiple call centres in the Montreal area, allegedly under the leadership of Gareth West, a 38-year-old from Burlington, Ont. But it was not the first time police officers raided scam call centres in the Montreal area and arrested groups — called "cells" in court documents — involved in grandparent scams. CBC News has found that police targeted a similar grandparent scam network operating in Montreal just months earlier that was strikingly similar to the recent case. Police and experts say the scams appear to be connected to organized crime. 'Hi grandma' American officials believe West's alleged grandparent scam operation began in the summer of 2021, mere months after the authorities broke up a different operation allegedly run by a Montrealer named Anthony David Di Rienzo. A summary of facts filed in court detailing the allegations against Di Rienzo says his scam began in 2019 and ran until March 24, 2021, when police arrested 15 people in the Montreal area and simultaneously arrested U.S. accomplices whose job was to collect money from victims. The allegations against Di Rienzo and his group mirror the ones against West and his group. For instance, both networks exclusively targeted seniors in the U.S. Both involved multiple "cells" operating out of "call centres." Both employed teams in the U.S. whose job was to pick up the money sent by a victim to abandoned or vacant addresses in the U.S. WATCH | Why are so many grandparent scams linked to Montreal? Why Montreal is a hub for grandparent scammers — and what's being done to stop them 4 minutes ago Duration 3:01 Court documents filed in the Di Rienzo case allege that the group targeted American seniors and varied the states they were calling each day because they believed it made it harder for police to track them down. The authorities in both the U.S. and in Canada have levelled similar claims against both of the groups allegedly run by West and Di Rienzo. The groups allegedly had similar organizational structures and chose their victims in similar ways: police say the head of the network delivered daily lists of potential victims to the cells. Those lists contained information including the name, age, address, phone number and income of possible victims. Neither the court documents filed in the U.S. or in Canada say where those lists came from, but police have said the information could have come from data leaks or even simply from publicly available sources. The cells then called the victims, and, according to conversation recordings obtained by police through wiretaps in the Di Rienzo case, they started each call with the same words: "Hi, grandpa" or "Hi, grandma." What followed was a carefully orchestrated fraud to convince the elderly victim that the scammer was actually the victim's grandchild and needed money. Usually, they said they had been wrongfully accused of a drug crime and required a surety — typically around $9,000 for bail. Once the victim was adequately convinced, other cell members called them, this time pretending to be police officers or lawyers, giving them the details of how and where to send the money. Court documents both in the U.S. and Canada say the Di Rienzo and West scams used that same strategy to convince hundreds of American seniors to send money, but they targeted thousands of potential victims. Each cell allegedly called dozens of people per day. But all the while, both groups attracted the attention of police in the U.S. and in Montreal, ending in their eventual arrests and criminal charges being laid. A spokesperson for Quebec's provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), which was heavily involved in the operation that led to Di Rienzo's arrest, said the two investigations were separate and police had not linked them. Steve Belzil, the head of the economic crimes division at the Service de Police de la ville de Montréal, said Montreal police and their partners at the Ontario Provincial Police and Homeland Security in the U.S. have been active in investigating grandparent scammers in Montreal. But he said scam call centres operate across the country, not just in Montreal. However, he noted that investigators in the city have established links between the grandparent scam networks and larger organized crime groups. Organized crime links Belzil said the major grandparent scam networks in Montreal tend to have connections to the Italian Mafia. On that day in March 2021, when police were conducting raids in Montreal and in the U.S., arresting Di Rienzo's alleged group, Quebec provincial police arrested a man named Francesco Sollecito. Sollecito's name appears in court documents tied to the case as a "relevant person" who communicated using the name "Frank." But though the documents say he was arrested alongside Di Rienzo and the rest of the group who were later charged, Sollecito was not. A spokesperson for the director of criminal prosecutions in Quebec, the DPCP, said they could not, in this case, disclose the reasons why no charges were laid. Sollecito has never been charged with a crime in Quebec. Sollecito is one of the sons of Rocco Sollecito, who was an ally of the Rizzutos, the reputed crime family that ruled the Montreal Mafia for years. Rocco was shot dead in Laval, Que., in 2016. But there are rumours that his son Stefano Sollecito, Francesco's brother, may have taken over as one of the heads of the Mafia in Montreal, according to Antonio Nicaso, a Mafia expert who has authored more than 40 books on organized crime and teaches the subject at Queen's University. Stefano was charged with gangsterism and conspiracy to traffic narcotics but he was acquitted in 2018. Nicaso said organized crime has been trying to diversify its revenue streams and may have been looking to see if grandparent scams are a viable source of income. And if they aren't already involved, they very likely will be soon, he said. "I have the feeling that this is what happened or what will happen in the near future because there is a lot of money to be made," he said. WATCH | What to do if you get a call demanding payment: How to protect your loved ones from 'grandparent scams' 2 years ago Duration 1:43 Fraudsters are getting more sophisticated. Here are some tips on how to help your family members identify a potential scam. Trial later this year The men alleged to be behind the Di Rienzo scam group have been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud and attempted fraud. Their case is winding through the courts and could go to trial later this year. The 25 people recently charged in the West group are facing wire fraud charges in the U.S. Most of them face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted, but the alleged leaders of the group could spend 40 years behind bars if convicted. Two of them, West and Jimmy Ylimaki, remain at large. None of the charges have been tested in court.
