Juan Ramon Fernandez

Juan Ramon Paz Fernández (23 December 1956 – 9 April 2013) was a Spanish gangster active in Canada and Italy who served as the right-hand man of Vito Rizzuto, the boss of the Montreal-based Rizzuto crime family.

Early criminal career Fernández was born in Ribeira, Spain and immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada with his family in 1961 at the age of 4. He never took Canadian citizenship despite growing up in Montreal and remained a Spanish citizen. As a teenager in the 1970s, he described himself as "a somewhat rebellious and hotheaded young man" with a fondness for violence. His major interests were working out at the local gym and learning various Asian martial arts. Fernández had a black belt in karate. He supported himself by robbing homes and selling stolen jewelry and credit cards to the Mafia. Initially, Fernández worked as a bodyguard and chauffeur for Frank Cotroni, but later switched his loyalties over to Vito Rizzuto, and became his protégé.

In 1977, Fernández murdered his 17-year-old girlfriend after she refused his orders to have sex with one of his associates. Putting his skills with karate to use, Fernández hit her with karate chops so savage to the throat that he cut off her ability to breathe. In a plea bargain with the Crown, Fernández pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. During his time in prison, Fernández worked as an enforcer for imprisoned members of the Rizzuto family. Upon his release from prison on parole, Fernández was ordered deported back to Spain, but he ignored the deportation order, which the Canadian authorities made no effort to enforce. An ardent fan of professional wrestling, Fernández posed for photographs with Hulk Hogan.

The Rizzuto crime family By day, Fernández worked as a car salesman in an auto shop in Saint-Léonard, and at night as a Rizzuto crime family enforcer. Fluent in Spanish, French, Italian and English, Fernández had connections with the Hells Angels, the West End Gang, the seven 'Ndrangheta clans of Toronto and with Colombian drug cartels. The Canadian journalists André Cédilot and André Noël wrote: "A handsome, muscle-bound specimen with dark hair and a brooding gaze, Fernández turned heads wherever he went". The Italian journalist Antonio Nicaso and the Canadian journalist Peter Edwards wrote: "Fernández stood out for his movie star good looks, volcanic tempter and black belt in karate, which let him to act out his aggressions in an efficient and deadly manner". Fernández was considered to be one of the more fearsome members of the Rizzuto family and was much feared in the underworlds of both Montreal and Toronto.

In 1990, a franchisee with the Pizza Hut corporation attempted to open a restaurant in Saint-Léonard, where Agostiono Cuntrera owned a Mike's pizza franchise and did not want the competition from Pizza Hut. The Cuntrera-Caruana clan is closely allied to the Rizzuto family. The records of police wiretaps showed that Fernández frequently called Cuntrera between November 1990-April 1991 to discuss the subject of the Pizza Hut in Saint-Léonard. On the night of 12 February 1991, Fernández was responsible for blowing up a Pizza Hut under construction in Saint-Léonard on behalf of Cuntrera. In turn, Fernández passed on the bombing contract to David "Wolf" Carroll, the president of the Hells Angels Halifax chapter, who had Patrick "Frenchy" Guernier, drive out from Halifax to blew up the Pizza Hut. After the bombing, the owner of the Pizza Hut franchise announced plans to resume construction, leading for the daughter of Cuntrera to tell her mother in a wiretapped phone call on 26 February 1991 to say that the man must have had a "death wish". Fernández again hired Guernier to burn down the Pizza Hut, which finally led for the plans for a Pizza Hut in Saint-Léonard to be abandoned.

A police report described Fernández as a "mobland supervisor" and as "the classic example of an enforcer used by La Costa Nostra". Another police report described Fernández as "a mobile-type drug supplier; i.e. he operates from his vehicle and is constantly on the move, using cellphones and pagers to stay in contact with his customers". Fernández took his orders directly from Raynald Desjardins, the French-Canadian lieutenant of Rizzuto. Fernández ultimately graduated up to be allowed to speak to Rizzuto himself and was seen several times with Rizzuto in public, always being careful to walk two steps behind his boss to show him respect. Fernández was arrested after the police found in the trunk of his Jaguar automobile three kilograms of cocaine along with $32,000 in cash. Fernández was sentenced to 42 months in prison and served his sentence at the Archambault Penitentiary. On 10 April 1992, he married a French-Canadian woman at the prison chapel with the guests of honor being Raynald Desjardins, his brother Jacques Desjardins, and their wives. During his time at Archambault, Fernández was usually seen with the Hells Angels Patrick Guernier and William McAllister of the West End Gang. Fernández was allowed out on day parole, and he usually visited Raynald Desjardins and Vito Rizzuto at their mansions on Gouin Boulevard West. One policeman recalled "we had to bang our fists and put a stop to the day paroles" as Fernández was violating his parole conditions by associating with men with criminal records. Angry at being denied day parole, Fernández went on a rampage of violence and smashed his personal computer he was allowed to keep in his cell. An attempt to have him transferred to the Leclerc Institution was refused after the prison guards union argued that he was too violent. Instead, Fernández was sent to the maximum security Donnacona Institution outside of Quebec City.

Despite the status of Donnacona Institution as a maximum security prison, Fernández arranged to have strippers put on shows in his cell. Bringing strippers for a show in a maximum security prison is not allowed in Canada, but Fernández was so powerful that he was allowed to do so several times in 1994. The most frequent visitors for Fernández were Desjardins's wife who regularly drove up from Montreal to see him and Carole Jacques, a prominent lawyer and a Conservative MP from 1984 to 1993 who was later convicted of influence peddling. Fernández tried to recruit former Hells Angels hitman Serge Quesnel to pass on $50,000 to bribe a witness for the Crown at a Mafia trial to change his testimony. Quesnel felt that Fernández was not offering him a large enough bribe and reported the offer to the authorities. Together with Glen Cameron of the West End Gang, Fernández set up drug deals from his prison cell to import hashish from Jamaica into Canada. When Cameron was released from prison in 1997, he fell into difficulties with the Hells Angels who shot him in the leg and warned him with a gun forced against his face not to sell cocaine to the Rock Machine anymore. Cameron appealed to Fernández for help and he in arranged for Cameron to meet Rizzuto in the Marché de La Tour mall. In exchange for $50,000 in cash, Rizzuto promised Cameron that the Hells Angels would leave him alone. Rizzuto also imposed the condition that Cameron would have to do anything that Fernández asked him to do or otherwise he would withdraw his "protection". After his release from prison, Fernández was seen more often with Rizzuto in public.

In 1999, the government of Canada finally executed the deportation order to send Fernández back to Spain. Fernández stated that he had no intention of obeying the deportation order and told the court: "I'm going to show them how I dance". Fernández promptly moved to the United States where he settled in an apartment in Florida rented by Carmine Iacono, a well-known lawyer in the Toronto area. Fernández soon settled in Toronto where he adopted the aliases Joey Bravo and Johnny Bravo. In Toronto, Fernández took his orders from Gaetano "the Discount Casket Guy" Panepinto, the Toronto agent of the Rizzuto family. When Panepinto was murdered in October 2000, Rizzuto promoted Fernández to serve as his new Toronto agent.

Toronto agent Upon learning that Fernández was living illegally in Canada, the York Regional Police launched Operation RIP against Fernández. He was arrested in March 2001 while drinking coffee in a Woodbridge café popular with Mafiosi. On 3 April 2001, Fernández was again deported to Spain and again he immediately returned to Canada later that month. Fernández returned to Canada using a forged passport made out in the name of James Gordon Shaddock, who had been born in Toronto on 26 May 1956 and died in 1968. Fernández settled in with his girlfriend, Lori Ploianu, in a luxury condo at 4450 Tucana Court in Mississauga. Using forged credit cards, Fernández went on a maniacal shopping spree of buying up consumer electronics. Fernández told one friend over his phone "Yeah, you get what you want-televisions, whatever you want". Using his forged credit cards, Fernández purchased $3.3 million worth of consumer electronics along with $19,000 on a white gold engagement ring with five diamonds for Ploianu and $3,187 for a gold necklace for himself. Ploianu was aware that her goods her fiancé was buying were purchased illegally and was recorded asking him how much she should sell to her friend the leather couches he had purchased. Fernández told his fiancée that she should charge her friend $300 per week to pay for the luxury leather couches he had purchased with the credit card made in Shaddock's name.

Fernández was a major shareholder in the Olifas Marketing Group (OMG) that won contracts for recycling newspapers and plastics in numerous Canadian cities, namely Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Markham, Windsor and St. Catherines. OMG was founded in Woodbridge in 1996 by Salvatore Oliveti and the company enjoyed a meteoric rise becoming the largest recycling company in Ontario and Quebec by beginning of the 21st century as it won more contracts for recycling than any other recycling company. Fernández was often seen talking to two men who sat on OMG's board of directors, Giancarolo Serpe, the former business partner of the Mafiosi Enio Mora and Frank Campoli who was a cousin of Rizzuto's wife and had been implicated in the Penway stock swindle affair. Campoli was recorded by a police bug as telling Fernández that he could use a OMG truck to move some a cargo of tiles. Fernández was recording as telling Ploianu when she was concerned about money: "Don't worry, we won't starve. Don't worry about it. There's the OMG coming through". In a phone call to a Mafia associate, Fernández said: 'We're just working on other things. We had Spanish people from me, from Spain, for the OMG thing and if it goes through there, well, there's a lotta, lotta money there for me in there". Oliveti claimed to be an ardent environmentalist and denied that OMG was a Mafia front, but in February 2010 it was revealed in a Revenue Canada audit that the wife of Rizzuto along with his three children owned $1.6 million worth of shares in OMG. Cédilot and wrote that OMG "was blatantly unconcerned about cleanliness" and was one of the worse recycling companies in Canada.

Using the services of a Montreal lawyer, José Guede, who was a partner in the law firm of Loris Cavaliere that often defended members of the Rizzuto family, Fernández set up a drug smuggling network with Rodolfo Rojas, an associate of the Colombian drug dealer Abraham "the Turk" Nasser. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) recruited a Portuguese immigrant who worked as a truck driver who smuggled cocaine from Montreal to Toronto to work as an informer. In exchange for becoming an informer, the RCMP dropped the conspiracy to smuggle narcotics against the truck driver along with a promise not to deport him back to Portugal. In December 2001, Fernández attended a meeting at the Centre Callego social club in Montreal with Nasser, Rojas, Guede and the Portuguese truck driver who cannot be named because of a court order to discuss smuggling cocaine into Toronto. Fernández often spoke on the phone with Nasser who was uncertain how he wanted the cocaine moved from Montreal to Toronto. On 30 December 2001, Fernández phoned the Portuguese truck driver to say: "Okay, man, good news. Our friend [Nasser] says it's a fruit store". Nasser phoned Fernández from Colombia to say he wanted 20% of all the profits based on an agreement that Rizzuto had made with the Hells Angels Montreal chapter president Maurice Boucher in June 2000 that stated the price for cocaine was 50,000 per kilogram. Fernández complained that the agreement that the Rizzuto family had made with the Hells Angels worked for Quebec where the Angels and the Rizzuto family were the major cocaine dealers, but would not work in Ontario.

Police wiretaps showed that Fernández was upset that the members of the Hells Angels elite Nomad chapter along the Angels' puppet club, the Rockers, had been all arrested in Operation Springtime on 30 March 2001 as he told one associate in a wiretapped phone call: "I was with one of the main guys in Montreal. They'd all fucked. They're all inside. All of the Nomads are inside, the Rockers are inside". In a phone call on 29 January 2002 to the Hells Angels Steven Lindsay he stated that: "And then when Mom [Boucher] started fixing up everything, it was too late. He [Rizzuto] told 'em. He told 'em a long time: 'Mom, Mom...they're [the police] gonna come with this, they're gonna come with that. You're gonna see, they're gonna really ruin you Mom'. Then Mom said, "Yeah, you're right, let's fix it'. Then it was too late". Fernández told Lindsay that he suspected a Rizzuto family member, Constantin "Big Gus" Alvizos, of stealing $600,000 that belonged to the family. Fernández added that he was planning on killing Alvizos himself or in having Pietro Scarcella kill him. During a drive though the Kensington Market with Lindsay in January 2002, Fernández who was unaware that his car was bugged by the police, saw a Sri Lankan immigrant whom he had recently beaten up. Fernández told Lindsay: "Fuckin' piece o'shit Tamil. Shoulda seen when I slapped him last time-the blood coming out". The police observed that other Mafiosi were so frightened of Fernández that their coffee cups rattled against the saucer while talking to him.

In his phone calls, Fernández normally called Rizzuto "the old man", "V" or "my partner". On 13 February 2002, Fernández told the truck driver: "The guy we have with the grocery, the old man [Rizzuto] don't wanna deal no more...He's paranoid because of the September eleventh thing...I want to see Jimmy; everything is passed in big machines with the X-ray, with the dogs...See, my partner, the Colombians in Cali...They're ready to give us as much as we want in Portugal, but to bring it over here, this is almost impossible". On 20 March 2002, Fernández called Rizzuto to say he had an important matter that had to be discussed in person and that he would be coming to Montreal soon. Fernández was a vain man and liked to boast about his friendship with Rizzuto. By the early 21st century, Fernández was considered to be the right-hand man of Rizzuto. Lieutenant-Colonel Fabio Bottino of the carabinieri told Humphreys in 2013: “Every day Fernandez was growing stronger”.

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