Juan Ramon Fernandez - Joe Bravo

In the early 2000s, Italian police intercepted a conversation regarding a drug deal between Mississauga mob figure Juan Ramon Fernandez and a Sicilian mafioso working for Messina Denaro. In the conversation Messina Denaro is referred to by his nickname of 'Diabolik'. Fernandez admitted guilt to a half-dozen underworld charges involving a murder plot, conspiring to traffic 1,000 kg of cocaine with Montreal’s Vito Rizzuto crime group and local Hells Angels, using forged passports, possessing a counterfeit credit card and defrauding a bank. Fernandez supported Rizzuto in his expansion from his Quebec base into the GTA in the early 2000s. The Rizzuto group encountered resistance from GTA underworld groups like the ’Ndrangheta. Fernandez used the names Joe Bravo, Johnny Bravo and James Shaddock.

Juan Ramon Fernandez, right, with Giuseppe Carbone shortly before Carbone killed him.

Two mobsters in Sicily were sentenced to life for killing two gangsters from Canada in 2016. Juan Ramon Fernandez, 56, had been deported from Canada when he was murdered. Dying beside him was Fernando Pimentel, who was visiting Italy to help his exiled boss. Pietro Scaduto, 51, Salvatore Scaduto, 54, and Giuseppe Carbone shot Fernandez and Pimentel to death on April 9, 2013.

Pietro Scaduto, left, Salvatore Scaduto. Giuseppe Carbone became a cooperating witness against the brothers.

Fernandez was close to both Rizzuto and Raynald Desjardins. Desjardins had brought Fernandez into a higher echelon of crime, but it was Rizzuto who gave him his power. Fernandez claimed Rizzuto even inducted him as a “made man” of the Mafia — despite him being Spanish, not Italian. Fernandez’s sin was failure to chose sides: He was “like a priest who visits all the churches.”

The order to kill Fernandez came from Canada. The bodies were dumped in a shallow grave and set ablaze. The car was then driven to a different location and was set on fire to destroy evidence. Unable to resist profit Carbone slipped an expensive watch off Fernandez’s wrist. It had been a gift to him from Rizzuto. Carbone was later caught trying to sell the watch, leading to his arrest. He agreed to help police with their investigation and to testify against his co-accused, becoming a “pentito” in Italian parlance.