Sicilian Mafia brothers handed life sentence for deadly ambush on two gangsters from Canada (2025)

After dramatic evidence from a killer who turned his back on the Mafia’s code of silence, two mobsters in Sicily were sentenced to life in prison for killing two gangsters from Canada, one of whom holds a mythic place in the underworld as such a dangerous man he made even hardened criminals quake.

Juan Ramon Fernandez, 56, had been deported from Canada for his mob antics when he was cut down in a fusillade of bullets in 2013. Dying beside him in the ambush was Fernando Pimentel, 36, of Mississauga, who was visiting Italy to help his exiled boss.

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Read Adrian Humphreys’ long-read feature on the Canadian-made mob killing in the heart of Mafia country.
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On Tuesday, after a lengthy stop-and-start trial, two brothers — who had also once lived in Canada — were found guilty of double murder, although Pietro Scaduto, 51, and Salvatore Scaduto, 54, deny their involvement.

The third gunman who shot Fernandez and Pimentel on April 9, 2013, became a cooperating witness and gave hours of detailed testimony in court. Giuseppe Carbone, 47, who, like the others, previously lived in Canada, was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

“Why were they killed, these two?” Fabio Marino, chairman of the Court of Assizes in Palermo, asked Carbone earlier at trial.

“There was a Mafia war in Canada,” Carbone answered.

The backdrop was the rebellion against Vito Rizzuto’s control of the Mafia in Montreal after Rizzuto was extradited to the United States in 2006 for three gangland murders. The rebellion was led by Raynald Desjardins, Carbone told court.

“He was the one who had the ongoing war with Rizzuto,” he said.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJFAVbxtSl4&feature=youtu.be

Fernandez had torn loyalties. He was close to both Rizzuto and Desjardins and owed much to each of them.

Desjardins had first brought Fernandez into a higher echelon of crime but it was Rizzuto who gave him his true power. Fernandez claimed Rizzuto even inducted him as a “made man” of the Mafia — despite him being Spanish not Italian.

Fernandez’s sin was his failure to chose a side: He was “like a priest who visits all the churches,” Carbone was told.

The order to kill Fernandez came from Canada, although he did not receive it directly. He is not a mafioso, he said, he only worked with Mafia members.

“Certainly Vito Rizzuto or Desjardins, what’s his name, did not call me to do the killings,” Carbone said. “Rizzuto didn’t call me to do the murders, Raynald Desjardins didn’t call me to do the murders; they called them (his co-accused). So they know who they were dealing with, I do not. I was an outsider.”

Once the order was given, Carbone and the two men on trial plotted the murder of a man known for his physical strength and determination. Fernandez was a martial arts expert, worked out every day, and was a stone-cold killer. In Montreal and Toronto, where he was also known by the name Joe Bravo, he instilled fear in even hardened criminals.

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Carbone said he stole the key to his cousin’s construction yard in an out-of-the-way lane in Bagheria, near Palermo. There was a lockable gate and fence that surrounded a concrete building and yard.

After two failed attempts to get Fernandez to the workshop, Pietro Scaduto convinced him to come with the promise of a great deal on a load of marijuana. Fernandez loved a good deal.

“So it was a very easy lure,” Carbone said.

Salvatore Scaduto was hiding in a dog’s kennel just inside the yard. Carbone was in the workshop. Pietro was to unlock and open the gate for Fernandez when he arrived. He had a gun hidden by the gatepost he was to pick up when closing the gate.

Fernandez arrived with Pimentel driving.

Pimentel was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a henchman recruited by Fernandez in Canada; he was visiting Sicily to help his boss push his way into the mob landscape in the very birthplace of the Mafia.

As their rental car pulled in, Salvatore burst out from his hiding spot early, before his brother had a chance to close the iron gate. It made for a frantic ambush. Pimentel opened the car door as if to flee or fight back but was met by gunfire. Fernandez reached over his body and tried to drive away.

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“Rei was driving like a madman,” Carbone said, using Fernandez’s nickname in Sicily. Pietro was struck by the car, injuring his shoulder. The gunmen rushed to the car firing furiously.

“I turn and see Rei on the floor, arms wide,” Carbone said. “He was almost in disbelief.”

Fernandez looked up at his attackers and said, “Sal, you too,” Carbone testified. (Previously, he said Fernandez’s final words were, “Why, Pete, why?”)

Pietro then shot him in the head with a pistol.

The two bodies were loaded into Fernandez’s car and driven to a remote illegal dump. Pietro grabbed the victims by their arms and Carbone by their legs as they hoisted them out of the car and dragged them by their belts into long grass.

The bodies were dumped in a shallow grave and set them ablaze. The car was then driven to a different location and also set on fire to destroy evidence.

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He still has nightmares about it, Carbone said.

“These memories don’t do me so much good,” he said.

Unable to resist a bit of profit, however, before the bodies were burned, Carbone slipped the expensive watch off Fernandez’s wrist. It had been a gift to him from Rizzuto and was one of the few items he brought with him from Canada.

Carbone was later caught trying to sell the watch, leading to his arrest. He agreed to help police with their investigation and to testify against his co-accused, becoming a “pentito” in Italian parlance.

Carbone led police to the victims’ charred bodies in May 2013.

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