911 operator charged with leaking police information connected to organized crime figure

A Calgary 911 operator accused of leaking protected police information to an organized crime group is connected to a man currently serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for drug trafficking and who is currently before the courts on extortion and weapons offences. 

Marian Buonincontri, 58, faces charges of breach of trust, fraudulent use of a computer system with intent to obtain computer services and mischief in relation to CPS or RCMP data.

The offence dates listed in court documents span from March 1, 2022 to Jan. 26, 2023.

Police have not said which organized crime group or member Buonincontri is affiliated with in Calgary.

Her lawyer Pat Fagan says his client "denies any association with organized crime figures."

But newly accessible court documents show that as a condition of her release, Buonincontri is forbidden from having contact with two men — a man listed on the records as "Steven Mark (Teti)" and Domenico Loiacono, a Calgary man with ties to organized crime in the city.

Fagan's son Sean Fagan, who is also a defence lawyer, represented Loiacono in his drug trafficking trial in 2021 during which eight members of the Calgary Police Service's (CPS) gang enforcement team testified.

In 2018, as part of a police investigation dubbed "Operation Gotham," Loiacono, 32, was caught with more than 11 kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine — with a street value of nearly $900,000.

A pre-sentence report filed as part of the sentencing hearing further illustrates Loiacono's organized crime affiliation. 

According to the report, Loiacono was removed from restaurants on several occasions by members of the gang suppression team, which is permitted legally "to remove members of known criminal organizations" from liquor-selling establishments.

According to Justice Karim Jivraj's sentencing decision, Loiacono told his probation officer he was selling drugs to "[get] out of a debt he owed to members of a criminal organization."

But the judge instead agreed with prosecutor Levi Cammack and found Loiacono to be a mid-level wholesale drug trafficker.

Jivraj handed Loiacono a six-and-a-half-year sentence.

"Common sense and ordinary human experience tells us that one does not get to handle this amount of cash and or drugs unless one is affiliated in one way or another to a larger network of suppliers and distributors, an inference wholly supported by the evidence," wrote Jivraj.