I remember the breaking point for him was when he had to go and borrow from his mom. He told me, ‘Man…I can’t…that is too much for [my pride]…’ And back then in the early 90s the [illegal] cigarette trafficking in Canada started. A lot of people were doing it. So Dino got into that…
[He] went to see the Indians. The Indians had the river so they could pass cigarettes [across] like crazy – or arms – whatever. And the Indians were big wrestling fans, you know? So when they saw Dino they were like, ‘Oh man..!’ They started dealing strictly with him. So Dino had the monopoly with the Indians. He started doing really well.
[After awhile] the cigarette business was doing so great that the cocaine people started saying, ‘Hey, maybe there’s some money in there for us too…’ So the big cocaine guy apparently went to see Dino and said, ‘Look, let me in on your cigarette deals and I’ll let you in on some cocaine deals…’
So what apparently happened is they did some kind of agreement. Dino had a $400,000 shipment in some warehouse somewhere and it stayed there for like, three days…and on the third day when the cocaine guy went to pick it up, the police were there.
So they were blaming each other. Dino was saying, ‘You should have picked it up [on] the first day and it never would have happened – you shouldn’t have let it sit there…’
There was a lot of heat on Dino. This was a week before he died. It was a Wednesday. His wife and his daughter went to Ballet lessons. He was watching Hockey [on TV].
His wife found him that night.
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