Salvatore Calautti

Salvatore "Sam" Calautti (1971/2 – July 12, 2013), was an Italian-Canadian hitman for the Calabrian based Mafia organization 'Ndrangheta based in Toronto and Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada, rivals with the Sicilian Rizzuto crime family.

Calautti was a father of three, restaurant owner and heavy gambler, employed by the 'Ndrangheta since he was a teenager when he worked as a debt collector who was known for his short temper and "always carrying a gun".

Calautti is connected to the murder of Giovanni Costa in 1991, who was gunned down near his home in Vaughan. In 1997, Calautti was accused of the murder of Giuseppe Congiusta, who was shot nine times as he got out of his car outside of a Toronto social club, but was acquitted the following spring when the jury found Calautti not guilty after a witness gave a description of the gunman that didn't match him. In October 2000, Calautti was suspected for the revenge murder of Vito Rizzuto's former right-hand man, Gaetano Panepinto, while he drove his Cadillac in Toronto after close 'Ndrangheta friends Domenic Napoli and his associate Antonio Oppedisano disappeared and believed murdered earlier that year due to conflict over gambling territory.

The Montreal Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation, Project Colisée found in 2006 that Calautti ran up over $200,000 in gambling debts to the Rizzuto family and the Hells Angels. After he refused to pay, the debt was believed to be assumed by Toronto mobster Michele Modica, sparking hostilities between the Rizzuto's Toronto connection Pietro Scarcella, leading to the 2004 attempted assassination of Modica in a North York California Sandwiches shop, leaving an innocent victim Louise Russo paralyzed. Calautti, however, was not one of the shooters in the attempted assassination.

Calautti was also investigated in the unsolved November 2010 murder of Nicolo Rizzuto, who was shot dead by a sniper while in the kitchen of his Montreal mansion after police saw one of Calautti's longtime associates in Montreal the day after the Rizzuto was murder.

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