An underworld “wise guy” said the $2.4 million he was paid by police for working against the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime group in the GTA doesn’t go halfway to compensating for his lost criminal income.

“I’ve done a lot of crimes,” Carmine Guido, 47, said on Tuesday on the witness stand at the University Ave. courthouse. “The $2.4 million isn’t half of what I gave up.”

Guido worked as a paid agent for the RCMP between 2013 and 2015, as he secretly taped dozens of conversations with suspected ’Ndrangheta members. Guido told court he and the RCMP had agreed on him being paid $2.4 million for working as a police agent in a two-year operation against ‘Ndrangheta. After hearing he wouldn’t get that amount, he sued the RCMP for $10 million. He settled for the original $2.4 million, and the government also covered his legal fees in the lawsuit, Guido said.

He told court he sued the RCMP last fall at a time of great emotional turmoil.

“I was under a lot of stress,” Guido said. “I was actually losing my mind.”

His comments come during cross-examination from Kathryn Wells, who with Anthony Doran is representing Cosmin (Chris) Dracea, 41, of Toronto. Dracea and Giuseppe (Pino) Ursino, 64, of Bradford each face two counts of cocaine trafficking for the benefit of a criminal organization and one charge of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

Guido has described Ursino as a local boss in the ‘Ndrangheta. He described himself as an ‘Ndrangheta associate, which is below the level of a member.

Guido told court he made $800,000 illegally trafficking drugs in a break between RCMP projects called OGusta and OPhoenix, when he wasn’t working for police.

“That’s in just five months? Correct?” Wells asked.

“Correct,” Guido said.

“So you have a lot of experience in selling drugs?” Wells asked.

“Some,” Guido replied.

He tried to deflect suggestions from Wells that Dracea was merely trying to scam him and never actually sought to import mass shipments of cocaine.

Court heard that Guido only managed to obtain one kilo of cocaine from Dracea in the nine months he knew him, despite discussing a variety of methods for importing 100 kilograms from the Caribbean.

Proposed schemes with Dracea included bringing cocaine into the country in jerk chicken sauce from Jamaica, bellies of fish from Peru and cocaine-saturated cardboard from Costa Rica, Guido said.

“Were alarm bells going off for you that maybe this cocaine was never going to come?” Wells asked.

“No,” Guido replied.

“You never got anything from any country?” Wells asked.

“No,” Guido replied.

“In your whole career as a so-called wise guy, you have never heard of Chris?” Wells asked.

“Correct,” Dracea said.

“I was never into the drug importation,” Guido said. “I had sold drugs. Bought drugs. But it (importing drugs) was new to me too.

“You’re an enforcer. Correct?” Wells asked.

“Correct,” Guido said.

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“You’re not afraid to use violence?” Wells asked.

“I wasn’t,” Guido said.

Guido earlier denied suggestions from Ursino’s lawyer Dragi Zekavica that Guido played a role in the unsolved murder of reputed mobster Carmine Verduci on April 24, 2014 outside a Woodbridge coffee shop.

Later, the Crown and defence agreed to a statement of facts that Guido was under police supervision at the time of the Verduci murder.

Guido said Dracea wasn’t a target of the original investigation and he had never heard of the Romanian immigrant until 17 months into the police project.

“Are there any non-Italian members in the ‘Ndrangheta?” Wells asked.

“I don’t think so,” Guido replied. “Not that I know of.”

Under further questioning from Wells, Guido said he tried to keep his associate, Gianfranco Caputo of the GTA, out of the police project.

“You wanted to shield Gianfranco?” Wells asked

“I wanted to shield him from cocaine — that he’s never been involved in,” Guido said.

Guido described Caputo as an ‘Ndrangheta associate who specialized in mortgage and bank fraud, not cocaine trafficking.

“He knows nothing about the game,” Guido said. “As you say, his forte is fraud.”

“He couldn’t even get me a kilo of cocaine,” Guido said.

The prosecution marks the first time in Canada that the ’Ndrangheta has been targeted as an organized crime group since the offence of criminal organization came into effect in 1997, senior federal prosecutor Tom Andreopoulos said earlier in an interview.

The trial continues.