Salvatore "Sam" Calautti (Italian: [salvaˈtoːre kalaˈutti]; 1971/72 – 12 July 2013), was an Italian-Canadian hitman for the Calabrian-based Mafia organization 'Ndrangheta, based in Toronto and Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada.
Calautti was a father of three, restaurant owner and heavy gambler, employed by the 'Ndrangheta since he was a teenager when he worked as a debt collector who was known for his short temper and "always carrying a gun".
[2] The journalists Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso wrote that Calautti was a diminutive, overweight man who did not stand out as physically dominating in the same way that the tall and muscular Gaetano Panepinto did, but that "...out-of-shape mobsters are sometimes the most dangerous, as they are the most likely to start shooting when threatened or irritated.
[6] Given the value of the goods left on his corpse, robbery was excluded as a motive, and it is believed that Calautti killed Loiero because it was rumoured that he was a police informant.
[6] Loiero had been eating diner with his family on a Sunday evening when he received a call for an emergency meeting in the parking lot of a mall;[6] half an hour later, his corpse was found in his van with multiple gunshot wounds to the head fired at close range.
[7] In October 2000, Calautti was suspected for the revenge murder of Vito Rizzuto's former ally Gaetano "Guy" Panepinto, in a drive-by shooting while he drove his Cadillac in Toronto after Calautti's close associates Domenic Napoli and Antonio Oppedisano disappeared in March of that year due to conflict with Panepinto over gambling territory.
[11] The major owners of the Platinum SportsBook were the Rizzuto family, the London, Ontario chapter of the Hells Angels, and a number of Mafiosi from York Region.
[11][8] Edwards and Nicaso wrote: "A string of meetings followed, in which senior mobsters resembled harried schoolteachers trying to decide what to do with a particularly troublesome student".
[12] On April 9, 2004, a meeting was held at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Woodbridge to discuss the question of Calautti's debts.