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HAMILTON, Ont. — Domenico Violi asked the judge for a moment with his family before being sent to prison for serious drug trafficking; he exchanged hugs and kisses with his wife and his 20-year-old daughter and high-fives with his 17-year-old son as supporters who overflowed from the courtroom variously cried and clapped.

The end of Monday’s hearing was about Violi’s family. It started, however, with family of a different sort.

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Violi, 52, was caught in an ambitious police probe that, as officials said at the time of his arrest, penetrated organized crime at its highest level and featured a co-operating turncoat mobster becoming a “made member” of a New York Mafia family.

The probe gathered a treasure trove of revelations and allegations in recorded conversations, capturing professed secrets, gossip and internal affairs.

The wiretaps, although untested in court, suggest a re-evaluation of some of what is publicly known about the current state of legendary Mafia families in the U.S., often referred to as La Cosa Nostra.