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Montagna was previously in charge of the Bonanno crime family in New York before authorities realized he was not a U.S. citizen and deported him to Canada in 2009.

After he arrived in Montreal, he tried to take over the Montreal Mafia, but quickly realized he had to work with others. During an RCMP investigation into a drug trafficking probe allegedly run by Desjardins and Mirarchi, the Mounties learned that by the start of 2011, an alliance formed by Montagna, Desjardins and a few other men was falling apart. Conversations intercepted by the RCMP revealed that Desjardins hated Montagna.

An attempt was made on Desjardins’s life in Laval in September 2011 and he responded by plotting to kill Montagna, who was fatally shot on Nov. 24, 2011. Desjardins and the group of men who worked under him were charged in connection with the murder. But they ultimately only pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder Montagna.

When most of the men were sentenced on Sept. 12, 2017, Fracas was left with a 39-month prison term. Late last year, he automatically qualified for a statutory release when he reached the two-thirds mark of his sentence. In that situation, the parole board is limited to imposing conditions on a release.

In October, or a month before Fracas had his first hearing before the board, Andrea (Andrew) Scoppa, the leader of his own clan within the Montreal Mafia, was gunned down in Pierrefonds. The Sûreté du Québec had also just revealed they had reason to believe Scoppa’s brother, Salvatore, who was killed in May last year, was involved in the 2016 murders of two leaders in the Rizzuto organization.