Mohacsy's Safe Portfolio Member Forum

[Elroy Jetson]

A turf war has fueled a 50% rise in Toronto shootings, mostly with guns smuggled from the U.S.

Rival gangs control parts of the tow-truck industry here, using the heavy-duty vehicles to transport drugs, extort car-crash victims with high fees, and fake automobile accidents to defraud insurance. They once resolved their territorial differences with their fists, but now a wave of gun smuggling from the U.S. has turned their fights into a lethal blood sport. https://www.wsj.com/articles/gun-trafficking-state-laws-11659539201

This year through late August, Toronto shootings are up 50% compared with the same period last year and homicides are up 20%—a surge caused in part by “the tow-truck violence,” said Inspector Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service’s guns-and-gangs unit. In all, about one in seven of Toronto’s shootings and dischargings of firearms this year have been related to the towing industry, police said.

“It’s pretty brazen,” Krawczyk said.

Toronto remains among the safest cities in the world, according to The Economist, which publishes an annual index on the topic. The city’s 306 shooting incidents from January to late August were far below the 1,553 recorded in Chicago or the 594 in New York City.

But the “tow-truck turf wars,” as the Canadian press has dubbed the Toronto shootings, have put the city on edge.



Drive-by shootings have targeted drivers and company offices. Masked arsonists have doused trucks in gasoline and torched them. In July, police said, two teenagers with a stolen Glock handgun killed a man after going on a two-day, citywide shooting spree that targeted towing-company offices and tow trucks.

In March, a towing-company owner was shot dead in a gangland-style killing in Toronto’s north end. His killing, which remains unsolved, triggered a spasm of violence. Things have gotten so bad that Toronto’s police department has created a tow-truck task force.

Authorities blame guns smuggled from the U.S. for the surge in violence. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has boosted the city’s policing budget and invested in programs to prevent youths from joining gangs, but she said the police are scrambling to keep up.

“No doubt about it, we are seeing way too many guns from the States coming across the border,” Chow said in an interview.

The disputes between tow-truck gangs are familiar, police said, as they fight over control of geographic territory. What has changed is how they settle scores.

Organized gangs rely on a readily available supply of guns smuggled north from such places as Ohio, Michigan, Texas and Florida, where it is much easier to buy a gun than in Canada.

Many Canadians own hunting guns, but can’t legally buy handguns, and semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 are banned. Background checks for firearms licenses are mandatory. Smuggled U.S. firearms are used in as many as 90% of all gun crimes in Toronto, according to the city’s police.

Canada’s border-patrol agency said its gun seizures at the U.S. border increased 25% between the 2019 and 2024 fiscal years. The agency said it can’t track how many guns are successfully smuggled into Canada, but the number is likely in the thousands, said Chris Taylor, the attaché to Canada for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which tracks gun trafficking for the Justice Department.

Almost 25,000 guns seized in Canada were traceable to U.S. sources between 2017 and 2021, according to ATF, part of a global trend of U.S.-made guns being smuggled to arm criminal gangs and insurgent groups. ATF traced almost 98,000 guns seized in Mexico to U.S. sources during those five years, and more than 26,000 in Central America.

Alexander Vinogradsky—the Toronto tow-company owner who was killed in March—allegedly a kingpin in Toronto’s tow-truck underworld who ordered hits on Soheil "Cadi" Rafipour, was shot dead that Christmas Eve in 2018 and another rival, both of who worked for Toronto resident Girolamo Commisso — the nephew of Cosimo Commisso, a man long alleged to be a senior Mafia figure in the Greater Toronto Area.

Girolamo Commisso aka "Shithead" - mafia rival



Toronto Tow Czars - Vinogradsky brothers aka "The Potato Heads"


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/richmond-hill-fatal-1.4958913

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cosimo-commisso-link-to-toronto-construction-firm-prompts-union-to-ask-for-police-probe-1.2619847

“When I started, it was all fistfights,” Vinogradksy said in 2019, according to court documents, after he escaped an attempt on his life. “Now it’s people hiring people to do this.”

According to a court document, he called police in a panic one day to report that he was in a car chase and someone was shooting at him. He told police the attempt on his life was “towing related.”

In 2020, he was charged with working for a criminal organization and conspiracy to commit arson. The charges were later dropped. Police investigated Vinogradsky when one of his rivals was killed in a Christmas Eve killing in 2018, according to court documents.

Rachel Lichtman, a lawyer who represented Vinogradsky when he was arrested in 2020, declined to comment on the specifics of her client’s case.

In March, police were called after shots were fired in north Toronto. They found Vinogradsky lying dead outside his bullet-riddled SUV.

Industry experts say the towing business is particularly vulnerable to corruption because it offers gangs an easy way to make money and transport contraband. Cities in Australia and South Africa have had similar problems with their towing industries, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva-based think tank.

What steps should Canadian officials take to address the turf war over tow-trucking services? Join the conversation below.

In Toronto, the crime groups often overcharge accident victims for towing and storage fees. Sometimes they fake accidents and, working with body shops and physiotherapists, create fake auto-repair and healthcare bills that bring in thousands of dollars from insurance companies. In raids on towing gangs, police have seized cash and drugs along with guns.

The province of Ontario, where Toronto is located, has introduced regulations that will force towing companies to be certified and for drivers to pass background checks.

“While the vast majority of Ontario’s towing industry operates in good faith, bad actors have preyed on vulnerable drivers for too long,” said Prabmeet Sarkaria, minister of transportation, in a June announcement.

For people working in Toronto’s towing industry, the violence has become a major source of concern.

“We don’t understand why,” said Sue Eddy, a dispatcher for SSR Towing, in Toronto’s east end. “Maybe they’re trying to intimidate us to get us out of the business.”

One shooting victim was Peter Simov, a 19-year-old student working for Vinogradsky in 2019.



On the day he died, Simov texted his girlfriend and told her that five of Vinogradsky’s trucks had been burned and that there had been a shootout.

He sent her a photo of a revolver his boss had apparently given him for protection, according to texts viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Simov was found dead later that night in what police initially described as suicide but was later determined to be an accidental, self-inflicted shooting. Simov’s sister, Nadezhda Simova, is pushing to get the investigative case records because she suspects her brother was actually murdered.

The gun in the picture Simov sent his girlfriend was eventually traced to a man charged in Canada with smuggling guns from Florida.