Suspected Mob Associate Owned House in Beverly Hills, Pleads Guilty in New York

By City News Service

An alleged associate of a Montreal-based mob family who had a stash house in Beverly Hills pleaded guilty Thursday in Brooklyn to federal cocaine-trafficking charges.

Alessandro Taloni, 39, who federal prosecutors say has ties to the Rizzuto family, will face between 10 years and life in prison as well as a $10 million fine, according to the terms of the plea agreement. He will also forfeit $2,663,191 seized from stash houses in multiple places in California, according to Robert Nardoza of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. Santa Ana and Anaheim police departments helped in the investigation, Nardoza said.

Taloni was charged with narcotics and money laundering crimes as part of an indictment in April that named 10 alleged members of a Montreal-based drug rink with ties to the Rizutto and Bonanno crime families, the Hells Angels, and the Sinaloa Cartel, according to prosecutors.

The drug ring allegedly trafficked more than $1 billion in marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy in the U.S. between 1998 and last year, according to the indictment.

Thousands of pounds of marijuana was imported from Canada by the Hells Angels and co-conspirators from the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation along the border, prosecutors allege.

Mobsters used millions of dollars in profits from the marijuana to buy cocaine from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico to be distributed in Canada, prosecutors allege.

About $1 million in drug profits and 49 kilograms of cocaine were seized in searches of Taloni's Mercedes Benz sedan, his Beverly Hills home and a stash house of Taloni's elsewhere in Beverly Hills, according to prosecutors.

Agents also seized 34 kilograms of cocaine and about $1.6 million from other stash houses in Southern California, according to prosecutors.

"Taloni was a major narcotics distributor who used his connections to powerful international organized crime groups to obtain and distribute tens of millions of dollars worth of deadly narcotics,'' said U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch in New York. "His conviction highlights this office's commitment to the global fight against transnational organized crime."