Note: This article is subject to legal complaint by Peter Kordas

Toronto police are investigating attempts by associates of Mayor Rob Ford to retrieve the crack cocaine video.

One target of the investigation is Alexander “Sandro” Lisi, 35, a Range Rover-driving Etobicoke man with a criminal history of threatening and assaulting women, who has been acting as an occasional driver and security guard for the mayor.

“(Lisi) knows he is the subject of an investigation,” said Domenic Basile, Lisi’s lawyer. Basile said Lisi would not answer any questions from the Star about the investigation or his association with Ford. “It is none of your business,” Basile said.

Lisi’s criminal record includes convictions for threatening death to one woman, and assault and threatening bodily harm to a second woman. He entered into a peace bond with a third woman who accused him of assault and threatening death. He also has been charged three times with drug possession. Only one of those charges led to a conviction, for which he was given an absolute discharge.

Lisi has told three associates interviewed by the Star that he is a supplier of drugs to Ford. The Star has been unable to verify Lisi’s claims, and Ford has not responded to questions about this sent by the Star on Monday.

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An ongoing Star investigation of the Ford video and matters surrounding it reveals that in the days after news of the video broke, Lisi and Ford’s “logistics director,” David Price, were on a mission to obtain the video, which Ford was publicly saying did not exist. Two Star reporters who viewed the video have described an obviously impaired Mayor Ford smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and making homophobic and racist remarks in response to goading questions from a man not seen in the video.

In one attempt to retrieve the video, soon after news of its existence broke on May 16, Lisi paid visits to the Etobicoke house where a group of men from the Dixon Rd. community involved in the crack cocaine trade were known to hang out. The bungalow is home to Fabio and Elena Basso, both friends of Ford.

“Where are the guys who made the video, Fab,” Lisi said, according to a witness who was present. “You know where they are.”

Fabio Basso, a quiet man, was nervous. “They’re gone. Out of town. Gone to Windsor,” said Basso. The Star does not know what Lisi did with that information.

A day later, just before midnight, Fabio, his girlfriend, and Fabio’s mother were assaulted by an unknown attacker brandishing an expandable baton who broke into their home. No charges have been laid in the attack.

Around the same time that Lisi was asking about the video, Ford’s “logistics director” and former football coach, David Price, was pursuing leads in the Dixon Rd. community of highrises where the Star reporters viewed the video. Price was making phone calls, seeking the whereabouts of the video.

Ford’s public position on the video was summed up in a quote he gave at a press conference one week after the story broke. “I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist,” Ford told reporters.

However, sources have told the Star that at a meeting the morning news of the video broke, Ford cited “our contacts” and told close confidants not to worry because he knew where the video was, and provided two apartment addresses in the Dixon Rd. complex. Later that day, Price sought out Ford chief of staff Mark Towhey, and raised the “hypothetical” question: What if he knew where the video was, what would be done? At one point, according to an account of the conversation, the straitlaced Towhey was heard to remark, “We’re not getting the f---ing thing!” Towhey reported his concerns to police and was interviewed by detectives that weekend.

Neither Lisi, Ford, nor Price have responded to numerous requests for interviews. Lisi’s lawyer, Basile, who confirmed his client is under investigation, warned a Star reporter to stop “harassing” his client with interview requests.

The Star has determined that police have been seeking information about the embarrassing video and are probing other activities of the mayor. Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash has steadfastly refused to answer questions about the Star’s findings.

Detectives involved in the case, including officers from the homicide squad, have interviewed or attempted to interview several Ford staffers and at least two of the men arrested in the Project Traveller guns-and-drugs raids carried out in June. Police have also interviewed people involved in a boozy St. Patrick’s Day 2012 incident involving Ford at the Bier Markt pub.

While a great deal of media attention has been focused on the video itself, the Star’s ongoing investigation shows that the video is just part of a puzzle that involves a great deal of unusual behaviour by the mayor of Canada’s largest city.

The video has also put a spotlight on a number of people close to the mayor.

Lisi, the Range Rover-driving man who has claimed to be Ford’s drug dealer, lives in his parents’ basement apartment, just east of the Basso family. Lisi and Ford are close: Lisi was Ford’s driver the day the mayor showed up stumbling and incoherent at the Garrison Ball, according to a former Ford staffer. Lisi and Ford often attend Toronto Maple Leaf hockey games together, most recently the first playoff game at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday, May 8, shortly before news of the crack video broke. A Toronto Sun journalist photographed the mayor and Lisi in an elevator that night returning from the Director’s Lounge.

Lisi’s court records show multiple charges and convictions. In June of this year, an Ontario court judge convicted Lisi of uttering a death threat against a woman in 2011. Lisi received a suspended sentence, two years’ probation, a five-year weapons ban and an order to continue to attend an anger management program. (Lisi is appealing the conviction.) Additional 2011 charges of assault and harassment for “repeatedly” following the woman and causing her to “reasonably, in all the circumstances, fear for her safety” had been dismissed three months earlier.

In 2008, he was charged with assault, uttering death threats and harassment for watching a different woman’s home. While those charges were withdrawn in 2009, a peace bond was issued ordering Lisi to have no contact with the woman. And in 2002, he was convicted on charges of threatening bodily harm, assault and criminal harassment for “repeatedly” following a third woman, as well as failing to comply with court orders. He served a 90-day sentence on weekends plus three years’ probation and was ordered to have no contact with the woman or her family.

The Star has obtained records of three past drug charges. In 2002, Lisi was charged with two counts of possession of marijuana under 30 grams. He was found guilty of one charge and granted an absolute discharge; the second was withdrawn.

In 2007, he faced charges of possessing more than 30 grams of marijuana, an offence more likely to result in jail time. That charge was stayed. In 2009, he was again charged with possession of more than 30 grams of marijuana. That charge was withdrawn.

Lisi is one of a cast of characters with whom Ford has surrounded himself. Like Lisi, two others we are about to tell you about live with their parents, within a kilometre or two of Ford’s home in Etobicoke.

Toronto police will not say whether they have spoken or attempted to speak to these men.

One of the men, Bruno Bellissimo, 43, who has known Ford since high school days, is a crack addict who is currently in a substance abuse treatment program. In one of many attempts to interview Bellissimo over the past month, the Etobicoke man unleashed a string of profanities, threatening the reporter’s job and family.

On March 2, Bellissimo, who lives in his parents’ basement, assaulted his parents. He was charged with two counts of assaulting his mother, one count of assaulting his father, and one count of threatening his mother with death.

He was kept in the Toronto West Detention Centre awaiting trial. Bellissimo has told friends the Star has interviewed that Ford tried to visit him at the detention centre in March, including one nocturnal visit long after visiting hours. The Globe and Mail reported Monday that Ford tried to visit Bellissimo on March 26, but was not allowed in.

It is not clear why Ford was trying to visit a known crack addict. According to two of Bellissimo’s friends, Bellissimo had boasted in the past that Ford had given him a debit card with instructions to withdraw money, and told Bellissimo he could use $500 for himself from time to time. Ford did not respond to written questions about this.

Bellissimo was convicted in May of assaulting his parents and threatening his mother. A second charge of assault against his mother was withdrawn by the crown attorney. Bellissimo received a suspended sentence with credit for time served awaiting trial, and was put on probation for two years, according to court records. He was also told to attend counselling for his drug addiction. He was released from jail on May 7.

Bellissimo’s return to the community was short-lived. Two weeks ago, neighbours saw police at his home, and shortly after that Bellissimo was admitted to a substance-abuse program for treatment.

In one interview with the Star, Bellissimo said, “Buddy, I am going to talk to the Crown and police and get you arrested.”

Another person who has been close to Ford is Peter Kordas, once a TTC driver who now drives a bus for York University and lives in his parents’ home one street over from Bellissimo. Kordas, on the many occasions the Star has tried to interview him, has responded with a stream of profanity that rivals Bellissimo’s outbursts.

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Kordas has told his friends he has been an occasional driver for the mayor in the past when he wants to go out at night. “I am a personal friend of Rob Ford’s,” Kordas told the Star a month ago.

The official record at the TTC shows Kordas resigned, but that came after the TTC began a process to dismiss him in 2003 for making a proposition to a young female under the age of 18. TTC records say Kordas spoke to a young woman on his bus and told her she could make money tending bar, in what the woman described in her complaint as a “shady” part of Toronto. The allegations against Kordas state that the girl felt Kordas was propositioning her. She wrote down the bus number, time and location when she exited the bus. Kordas saw her do this and allegedly altered his paperwork to place his bus at a different location at the time of the incident, the TTC alleged in a job action against Kordas.

Ultimately, Kordas dropped his fight against the allegations and signed an arbitration document saying he resigned. Friday, Kordas warned the Star about printing any information about his TTC records.

“If you do that, I am going to go on CFRB and tell (radio host) John Tory everything.”

Kordas has not been seen with Ford recently. According to a former Ford staffer, Kordas was present on St. Patrick’s Day 2012 at a raucus pre-party in the mayor’s office at Toronto City Hall leading up to a boozy night at the Bier Markt on the Esplanade. Ford was seen to be “incoherent” and “hammered” in a private room at the Bier Markt, according to a restaurant staffer, and was eventually asked to leave.

“I’m not talking about any of that stuff,” Kordas told the Star in an earlier interview, before launching into a string of harassing phone calls alternating with threats, boasts that he is close to the mayor and “you have no idea who you are dealing with,” and ending with a night-long series of phone calls that were unintelligible.

Friday, Kordas called the Star to apologize and said, “I have no comment on the events of St. Patrick’s Day.”

Talk of the crack video has dominated coverage of the mayor since its existence became known late on the evening of Thursday, May 16.

The next day, Friday morning, a throng of media was camped out at Ford’s home on Edenbridge Dr. in Etobicoke.

A video shot by NOW Magazine associate news editor Enzo DiMatteo shows the throng greeting Ford. But DiMatteo also captured what happened as Ford drove off in his black Cadillac Escalade. In the video, Ford stops his Escalade just past his house and is briefly greeted by logistics director Price, who is on foot. Approaching from the east is a black Range Rover, which neatly swings around and follows Ford, first to the Tim Hortons and then, along with Price in his car, north up Scarlett Rd.

The Range Rover was driven by Sandro Lisi. The NOW account (which does not identify Lisi) describes how, just short of Highway 401, Lisi and Price left the Ford entourage, destination unknown. Just west of the area where they were last seen are the Dixon Rd. apartments and the home of the Basso family, where the now infamous photo of Ford and three men was shot sometime in 2012. One man in the photo, Anthony Smith, was later killed by gunfire, while another was wounded in the same incident. The wounded man and the third man in the photo with Ford were arrested in the Project Traveller drug and gun raids in June of this year.

The ownership of the Range Rover Lisi drives is unusual. A man who is a former drug client of Lisi leased the vehicle for Lisi two years ago, in return for a promise of several thousand dollars in cash. Lisi had complained he had bad credit, but really needed a nice SUV for his work.

Lisi provides the cash to cover the monthly payments and the man makes the car lease payments, according to sources.

Recently, Lisi changed the licence plates on the Range Rover “because of all the Ford s---,” Lisi told an associate.

On the morning of May 16, when news of the crack video was out, Lisi and Price began a mission to try to retrieve the video. Price, who coached Ford in football, is a longtime friend of the family. In an interview with the Globe and Mail when Price was hired, Councillor Doug Ford, asked why Price was on staff, said: “You can’t teach loyalty.”

After Mayor Ford blurted out two possible apartment numbers where people with the video could be found and Price made his report to Ford’s chief of staff, the Toronto police got involved. Price, however, kept looking for the video. He approached the Dixon Rd. community with vague offers of assistance if the video could be handed over to him.

Meanwhile, Lisi was focused on the Basso home, where the photograph was shot and where Mohamed Siad, one of two men trying to sell the video to the Star and Gawker, was known to have visited.

The Star’s ongoing investigation reveals that the Basso home, up until late December 2012, was being used as a crack house. The Star has talked to people who witnessed drug activity there. The police, as part of the Project Traveller raids, obtained a search warrant for the home at 15 Windsor Rd. It is not known if the home was searched.

Lisi paid at least two visits to 15 Windsor in the days after news of the video surfaced. One of them was on Monday, May 20, four days after the first story describing the existence of the crack video. After Lisi questioned the Bassos, he was seen in the area again the next day, a source told the Star.

Over the next few days, Price also continued his inquiries into the location of the video in the community.

Those inquiries by Price slowed, but did not completely stop, on Friday morning, May 24. That day, Ford gave his first declarative comment about the existence of the video. Ending seven days of silence, Ford said:

“I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. As for a video, I can not comment on a video that I have never seen, or does not exist.”

Kevin Donovan can be reached at (416) 312-3503 or kdonovan@thestar.ca