lol this idiot thought he was getting out
imagine being 33 and and your first chance of getting out of jail you'll be nearly 60
The jury that convicted an underground Toronto rapper in the murder of mob enforcer Antonio (Tony Scratch) Fiorda has resolved who carried out the planned execution, but not who was behind the contract killing.
And that’s exactly as intended, as are the people who hired him.
On Monday night a Superior Court jury found Saaid Mohiadin, 33, guilty of first-degree murder in Fiorda’s lunchtime execution outside the upscale Via Allegro Ristorante in a square opposite Sherway Gardens on November 4, 2019. The downtown Toronto jury took just four hours to reach a verdict after a three-week trial.
Mohiadin, who is appearing as rapper Flippa, now faces a mandatory life sentence – along with another murder trial in 2023.
His accomplice Keeshawn Brown, an 18-year-old fellow rapper who appeared as Why-S, was charged with firing the fatal shots but was not alive for the trial. He was shot and killed less than two months after Fiorda’s murder on December 23, 2019 in a run-down tenement on a busy street in Surrey, BC. No arrests were made in Brown’s murder, which “remains an open investigation,” a media spokesman for the Surrey RCMP told the Star.
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'They paid us 60': Toronto rapper guilty in daylight execution of mob enforcer 'Tony Scratch'
During the Toronto trial, prosecutors told jurors Brown and Mohiadin that they hunted down and killed Fiorda so they could collect $60,000 – money they waved around in celebratory cell phone videos.
Evidence presented by prosecutors included testimony from two undercover Ontario provincial police officers who were at the scene and conducting surveillance as part of an unrelated organized crime investigation. They provided key details about the Ford F-150 the killers were using and set on fire, and helped Toronto Police identify the couple.
The jury heard no evidence as to why Brown and Mohiadin, both well-known in Toronto’s underground drill music scene, were recruited, or why Fiorda was a target. Investigators found no links between the men. Had the OPP not been present to witness the execution, the couple might have gotten away with murder.
Police and prosecutors have long suspected that traditional organized crime groups – like the mafia, drug cartels or motorcycle gangs – pay young black men to do their dirty work.
In a 2020 Toronto Star article, organized crime expert Peter Edwards wrote that while local gangsters and outlaw bikers “used to get their hands dirty,” crime groups in Ontario “are more likely to recruit younger, lesser-known criminals to do their toughest jobs to do. ”
“In the GTA, mafia and outlaw bikers are increasingly turning to the area’s 150 or so street gangs to pull off everything from drug shipments to targeted assassins,” said Anna Sergi, a criminologist who has profiled Ontario’s organized crime landscape , opposite Edwards.
“Baby gangs are easily nurtured by more experienced groups and used as weapons and throwaway armies.” Additionally, established criminals are happy to give contracts to people who know little about who they are killing or why, making them unlikely to cooperate with authorities when they get caught.
Mohiadin testified that the police had the wrong man, and his lawyer Dirk Derstine argued that none of the surveillance footage and other evidence used by the Crown positively identified Mohiadin as the perpetrator. Prosecutors Mike Wilson and Sean Horgan argued that footage of the getaway driver matched Mohiadin’s height, build, unique braided hairstyle, facial hair, and pigeon footing.
“The eyes don’t lie,” Horgan said in his closing speech last week, referencing a photo comparison of the rapper.
Mohiadin’s family came to Toronto from Somalia as an infant and settled in impoverished Lawrence Heights, where his parents raised their six children. Brown, meanwhile, was from the hard-nosed Driftwood neighborhood, near Jane and Finch.
Fiorda, 50, was living in Maple, north of Toronto, when they executed him. At the time of his death, sources told the star that he was particularly close to members of a York-area Ndrangheta crime family, who were related to a criminal group in southern Italy, and had previously been closely associated with the York-area Loners Motorcycle Club.
Fiorda also had family members who went to court every day and cried when the verdict came early Monday night.
The main evidence in the trial was the contents of a white and pink iPhone that Mohiadin had when he was arrested. When he testified last month, Mohiadin insisted the phone was a loaner from Brown, a drug dealer who had several “burner phones.”
During closing arguments last week, Horgan asked the jury to dismiss that allegation.
“It’s not Keeshawn’s phone,” Horgan scoffed. He listed many reasons why it belonged to Mohiadin, including – by his own admission – that he had to constantly post images and content to social media regularly, “or fans will forget you.”
The reason Mohiadin denied the phone was his was because it was a “central repository for all information regarding the Fiorda hit-and-run,” including his home address, personal information – he walked with a cane – vehicles from which he known to drive and exercise schedule, Horgan told jurors. More than just a getaway driver, Horgan stressed that Mohiadin started the deadly chain of events, including stalking Fiorda at his LA gym a week before the murder.
Included on the phone was a screenshot of a series of scathing texts dated November 6th.
Tony Scratch
Hell, he must have loaned someone money then they flipped the script
The man has had a contract for a year
How much
I heard about this contract about a year ago
They paid us 60 lol
The star has interviewed several defenders who say they are aware of the cross-pollination between traditional underworld figures and street gangs. (Mohiadin testified about his own criminal baggage at his murder trial; he was “on the run” after violating parole conditions at the time of the murder.)
The jury at his trial was told that the man Fiorda went to lunch with on November 4 was Joseph Catroppa, who ran for cover when the bullets started flying and escaped unharmed. Catroppa had previously served a 10-year sentence for manslaughter after pleading guilty to slashing and stabbing a man in 2000.
Ten months after Fiorda’s assassination, Catroppa was shot dead outside a hotel in Cancun, Mexico. His murder remains unsolved.
Homicide Sgt. Henri Marsman, the lead investigator in the Fiorda case, declined to say whether he believes Fiorda was founded by Catroppa.
www.cp24.com
