Montreal cocaine trafficker killed in Dominican Republic Linked to the mafia, Giuseppe Lopez was shot on Tuesday outside his residence in Juan Dolio
A mafia-linked Montrealer who was nabbed in a major strike against a drug-trafficking ring in 2015 was shot and killed Tuesday night in a seaside village in the Dominican Republic.
Giuseppe (Joe) Lopez was murdered at the end of the evening while driving a motorcycle near the secondary residence that his family owns in the small town of Juan Dolio, according to information obtained by Le Journal and our Investigation Office .
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has also confirmed to the Journal that a man known to the police was shot dead in the Dominican Republic.
According to our sources, the 58-year-old man is a member of a notorious clan of Montreal mafia traffickers who have fallen out with the Rizzuto clan.
He was staying there with his uncle, Serafino Oliverio, whom the underworld of Montreal knows rather under the name of "Sergio Lopez".
Mistake on the person?
The latter, who has already had business ties with several mafia clans and other organized crime groups, had also been shot and wounded during an attempted murder in November 2021 in the Rivière-des- Meadows.
Oliverio's presence and the shooting he already survived in Montreal two years ago will likely lead local law enforcement to investigate the possibility that Giuseppe Lopez may have been the victim of a mistaken persona and that it was his uncle who was rather targeted by the shooter.
According to our sources, the residence owned by the Lopez-Oliverio clan in Juan Dolio, located about sixty kilometers east of the capital Santo Domingo, is usually protected by armed security guards.
However, it appears that was not the case when Giuseppe Lopez was shot on his motorbike while returning to his home near the fence at the entrance to the property.
The victim was known to authorities for his involvement in the cocaine business. He and his twin brother Franco, along with their younger brother Pasquale, 50, were accused of playing a role in supplying a major cocaine trafficking ring linked to the Hells Angels during the Magot-Mastiff project in 2015.
In the communications between suspects intercepted by the police during this investigation, they were referred to respectively as Espresso, Cappuccino and Caffe Latte.
The Sûreté du Québec investigation tended to establish that they would have sold a dozen kilograms for nearly $ 700,000 to the network of traffickers who controlled the distribution of this drug in the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough, according to documents legal proceedings obtained by the Bureau of Investigation.
Bad quality
However, the business ties between the parties had been ruined since half of this cocaine turned out to be of poor quality. The network even reportedly “returned a full kilo to the Lopez family,” according to police reports resulting from Magot.
The three Lopez brothers, however, escaped unscathed in the fall of 2019 following a stay of the legal proceedings obtained by the Crown due to the unreasonable delays in trying them.
Bars linked to the Lopez-Oliverio clan were also targets of arson between 2018 and 2020.
