In the final two years of Frank's life, he released a cookbook, Cuisine des souvenirs et recettes (Kitchen of Memories and Recipes), published by a subsidiary of Quebecor Media.

[2] Within Montreal, Cotroni was known to French-Canadians as Le Gros ("the Big Guy") and to Italo-Canadians as Il Cice (an Italian phrase for the soft center of a hard nut).

[5] Cotroni grew up in a house at the junction of Ontario and St. Timotheé streets in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal (now in Montreal), a poor neighbourhood that more affluent Italian immigrants avoided because of its high crime rate.

[9] A group of students from McGill University were being held in the Montreal jail following allegations of drunken behavior and throwing a beer bottle at a police officer.

[9] On 1 July 1966, he rented a house at 5146 Trans-Island Street, which was directly opposite a branch of the Decarie Boulevard City and District Savings Bank.

[11] Shortly afterward, Cotroni was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery under the grounds that he must had known that a tunnel was being dug from the house he rented to the vault of the Decarie Boulevard City and District Savings Bank.

[3] Cotroni also imported hashish from Lebanon, and was so well connected in that country that in 1975 the police discovered that he had called President Suleiman Frangieh several times.

[14] In 1969 and 1970, Cotroni was seen by the police talking several times with Tommaso Buscetta of the Sicilian Mafia, which was believed to marked the beginning of his career smuggling heroin.

[15] In 1970, Cotroni along with his brother Vic attended a crime summit in Acapulco to meet with gangsters from Canada, the United States, France, and Mexico to discuss plans to take over the soon-to-be-legalized casino industry in Quebec.

[17] On 18 February 1971, with his lawyer Sidney Leithman at his side, Cotroni called a press conference to discuss his arrest in Mexico the previous month.

[18] The scholar Steven Schneider noted that Cotroni's "reckless abandon" led to him being arrested more times than his brothers Vic and Pep had been combined.

[24] On 7 January 1975, Thomas Puccio, the assistant U.S. district attorney for New York, told a jury that Cotroni along with Frank D'Asti were "the middlemen" who brought the "buyers and sellers together".

[27] Peter Edwards, the crime correspondnet of the Toronto Star wrote, "Even those who understood that he was a seasoned criminal knew he was telling the truth when he spoke of his love for his young children".

[27] While in prison, Frank met fellow inmate, French-Canadian Réal Simard, nephew of Armand Courville, a long-time associate of Vic Cotroni.

[30][31][32] During his time in the "Mafia Row" at the U.S. federal prison in Lewisburg, Cotroni strengthened his connections with American Mafiosi, which is believed to have saved his life upon his return to Montreal.

[34] The Canadian criminologist Steven Schnedier called Cotroni's proposed plea bargain a "scam" that he attempted to commit against the U.S. Department of Justice.

[34] One Bonanno family capo, Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato, unaware of the fraudulent nature of Cotroni's offer, ordered him killed as a "rat" who had violated omertà.

[35] The U.S. Department of Justice, knowing that Cotroni was essentially attempting to buy his way out of prison with his "scam" offer to reveal the location of the counterfeit money and plates, declined his proposed plea bargain.

[37] Frank kept a high profile, attending boxing matches and hockey games, and cruising around Montreal in his Lincoln Continental driven by Simard.

[33] A militant fan of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, Cotroni was always at the Molson Arena to watch their games and likewise he was a constant presence at boxing matches.

[40] An FBI report of 17 May 1982 stated that a senior member of the Genovese family "is dealing junk [heroin] on a large scale with Frank Cotroni out of Canada".

[41] Cotroni frequently visited Toronto in the company of the boxer Eddie Melo who served as his bodyguard where he usually met Simard and Rocco Zito.

[48] Operation Borgia by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police concluded that Cotroni had close links to 40 boxers, trainers and promoters in Toronto, Hull, Cornwell, Winnipeg, Montreal and Boston.

[48] The Bernier commission wrote that boxers in Quebec as a condition of their employment were required to sign exploitative contracts that ensured that they had to hand over half of their earnings from not only their boxing fights, but also from any non-boxing jobs they might hold to people associated with Cotroni.

[50] Schoofey told The Globe and Mail that he was unhappy with the contract the Hiltons signed with King, saying: "I would have gotten a million-dollar guarantee for the boys, with big bonuses up front".

[26] On 23 August 1998, Cotroni's son Paolo was shot and killed in the driveway of his home in Repentigny by two hitmen, Gérald Gallant and Gérard Hubert.

[56][57] Police initially investigated a theory that Paolo Cotroni was killed over a $250,000 debt he owed to an Asian organized crime syndicate, but the Rock Machine motorcycle gang later became the prime suspects in the murder.

[57] On 26 March 2009, Gallant testified that he and Hubert had killed Paolo in a $20,000 murder contract given by Frédéric Faucher and Marcel "Le Maire" Demers, the leaders of the Rock Machine's Quebec City chapter.

[57][56] On 30 June 2002, Frank Cotroni was arrested for violating his parole conditions by meeting men with criminal records in an Italian restaurant, but was released in August 2002.

[59] In the final two years of Frank's life, he released a cookbook, Cuisine des souvenirs et recettes (Kitchen of Memories and Recipes), published by a subsidiary of Quebecor Media.