Salvatore Cazzetta is a Canadian outlaw biker and the Founder of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club, convicted of narcotics-trafficking. He also has a long association with the Rizzuto crime family, in Quebec.Salvatore Cazzetta was born in 1954. He grew up in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Saint Henri in South Montreal. This rea was a territory of the Dubois Brothers. Cazzetta began to be involved in low-level crime when he was a young man. His first arrest was in 1975, he had stole a Ford Mustang and scraped it for parts. In 1976, he became a founding member of and leader of the SS Motorcycle Club. In 1977, he and his brother Giovanni where charged with robbery and breaking and entering. They had broken into a local bar and attempted to steal money from the cigarette machines, they only found $300. The police would show up and well hiding in the basement Salvatore attempted to attack an officer. For this he received a two year sentence. By 1980, he had been released and his love for the biker lifestyle had only increased. Shortly after his release he had been caught attempting to steal a Harley-Davidson. Cazzetta got a tattoo on his arm that depicted a Harley Davidson motorcycle with the word "Brothers" inscribed.By 1981, Salvatore was back in prison for minor offences. He had been involved in a series of break-ins and robberies of local businesses. This included the theft of 26 leather jackets from a clothing store (presumably to be turned into biker vests). While incarcerated at the Bordeaux Detention Center, he participated in the murder of fellow inmate Wayne Story. Five men, including Salvatore had stormed into Story's cell and beat him to death with metal rods. The police believe that this was a gang related incident. The evidence against Salvatore and the other convicts was weak so it was dismissed. By 1982, he had been released from prison. Now that he was free he began to sell narcotics. Not to long after, he would end up doing a 2-month term for possession of 56 g of PCP.By 1984, the SS Motorcycle Club's membership had increased. It now contained several high-profile figures in the Canadian biker scene. This included, Salvatore, who was the leader of the SS, Giovanni Cazzetta, Paul Porter, Maurice Boucher, Normand Hamel, Gillies Lambert, Louis "Me-Lou" Roy, Normand Robitaille, Salvatore Brunetti, René "Balloune" Charlebois, André Chouinard, Denis "Pas Fiable" Houle, Gilles “Trooper” Mathieu, Michel Rose and Richard “Bert” Mayrand, and Frédéric Faucher. Fellow SS member, Maurice Boucher (joined in 1982) became friends with Salvatore Cazzetta, and as leaders of the club, the pair became candidates to join the Hells Angels when that club expanded into Canada. The SS Motorcycle Club was dispanded in 1984, Salvatore, Giovanni and Porter, along with others would choose not to join the Hells Angels. The Rock Machine was created in 1986. That same year Boucher was released from prison. The Cazzetta brothers offer Boucher membership in the Rock Machine, but he would decline this offer.Elements of the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter had become convinced that five senior members of their club had been embezzling club profits, so they tricked them into a meeting, and killed them. According to true crime author RJ Parker this killing triggered distrust within other elements of Canada's underworld empire. According to Parker, the Cazzetta brothers were closely related to senior member of the Rizzuto Crime Family, and thus adopted the position that underworld members should not kill other members of their own gang. Boucher did join the Hells Angels. In 1986 Salvatore formed his own club, the Rock Machine alongside his brother Giovanni and other Former members of the SS. The club established it's mother chapter in the city of Montreal. The Cazzetta brothers recruited some of the best talent available. By the early 1990s, the Rock Machine had over 100 members or prospects between its Montreal and Quebec City chapters. They also formed alliances with the Rizzuto crime family, the West End Gang, and the Dubois Gang. Under the leadership of the Cazzetta brothers, the Rock Machine flourished. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990, the club began to use their contacts in the West End Gang to purchase large and import amounts of narcotics though the port of Montreal. Salvatore Cazzetta has often been described as controlling all of the organized crime in Montreal that was not controlled by the Mafia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Times were profitable for the Rock Machine, enough so that Salvatore had purchased a mansion worth $2 million in L 'Epiphanie, Quebec.In January 1993, West End Gang associates, William "Billy" McAllister and Paul Larue had been in talks with Salvatore to put together another large deal for the two groups. They had been speaking with a contact named John Burns in Florida, who had agreed to supply a large amount of cocaine. The pair did not have enough money so they were reliant on the Rock Machine and other aligned motorcycle clubs to provide most of the $875,000 (modern equivalent of $1,847,546) in US currency needed for the initial purchase. On March 10, 1993, the exchange was officially set. On March 19, 1993. Salvatore Cazzetta and fellow high-ranking Rock Machine member, Nelson Fernandez traveled to Florida. With them they brought the Rock Machine's contribution to the deal, which amounted to $660,000 (modern equivalent of $1,393,577). The two exchanged the money with Burns at a hotel. The plan was for them to take the initial portion of the shipment to two others that would be in charge of getting it across the Canadian border. The amount that they were paying for the cocaine seemed too good to be true and it was. On March 21, 1993, McAllister and Larue, along with several others were placed under arrest by Quebec police in relation importation of narcotics. Burns turned out to be an undercover DEA agent that had purposely lured McAllister into the trap. The two high ranking Rock Machine members would miraculously make it back to Canada before being arrested.Both the Rock Machine and the Hell Angels remained on peaceful terms for years. There were multiple factors to this. Salvatore and Maurice Boucher were "longtime friends" and possessed a great amount of respect for one another. The Cazzetta brothers also had business dealing and ties with Italian-Canadian Mafia groups in Quebec. Particularly the Sicilian Rizzuto Crime Family. As they imported large amounts of narcotics through the port of Montreal, the Rock Machine acted as one of their distributors. The mechanists would supply their product to street level operations to be sold. Giovanni Cazzetta was particularly involved with the mafia, being friends with several high profile mafia members. These operations gained the club considerable notoriety and influence in Quebec's criminal underground.According to RJ Parker, another possible theory the Hells Angels would not instigate any issues against the Rock Machine were out of concern the powerful Rizzuto Family would directly intervene on their behalf. It was said that the Cazzetta brothers were related to a member of the Rizzuto family. He wrote that while Boucher worked to rebuild his chapters ties with fellow Hells Angels chapters and other criminal groups. Salvatore Cazzetta had too forged alliances to mafia's and motorcycle clubs. He had also forged ties with cartels in South America, and had become one of Montreal's principal importers of cocaine and heroin.Cazzetta's cocaine smuggling and distribution triggered extra police scrutiny. On May 6, 1994, founder of and national president of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club, Salvatore "La Barbe" Cazzetta was arrested at a pitbull farm located in Fort Erie, Ontario. He had initially used the property to store drugs. He had been "on the run" for over a year, police found two attack dogs on the property. He was charged with attempting to import eleven tons (11,000kgs) of cocaine. (Valued at an estimated $418,000,000, adjusting for inflation the modern value is $860,563,846.) Salvatore would be imprisoned in Quebec until 1998, when he was extradited to Florida to serve the remainder of his sentence. In June 1999 Cazzetta pled and guilty to narcotics charges, and was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. The then Rock Machine national vice-president and Salvatore's "right hand man", Nelson Fernandez was arrested in Montreal. He was able to serve his time in Canada because he won his extradition case. He remained incarcerated for almost the entire conflict. He disliked the idea of joining the Bandidos, so he joined the Hells Angels in December 2000.Cazzetta's detention triggered the Hells Angels to begin to try to gain a monopoly, this force them into direct Conflict with the Rock Machine. The struggle lasted eight years. In August 1996, Salvatore Cazzetta who was being held in the Parthenais Detention Center prior to his extradition to the United States, was attacked and wounded by six other prisoners in a "jailhouse contract". Salvatore claimed that with him in prison, he never had any involvement in the Quebec Biker War, he attempted to blame the conflict on the Hells Angels and other members of Rock Machine. Authorities in Canada heavily disputed this. Stating that he had been giving orders to the members of the Rock Machine via telephone and message while incarcerated at Archambault Prison in Quebec. By the time Cazzetta had served his sentence Boucher himself was serving a life sentence, the war was over, and The Rock Machine had been absorbed into the Bandidos.In June 2004, Salvatore was released from prison after being granted bail, he had served 2/3 of his sentence. He expressed Joy when he heard that he would not have to spend the remainder of his sentence at a halfway house, and declared his intentions to move to Ontario where he was less known. Eventually Cazzetta chose to join the Hells Angels in 2005. He would rise to lead the Hells Angels in Quebec. On June 3, 2009, 600 cops arrested 46 persons in the Montreal area and on the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve. Included in the crackdown were former Rock Machine leader Salvatore Cazzetta, along his "right-hand man" Daniel “Putin” Leclerc, forty. The charges against them included trafficking in contraband cigarettes and other drugs such as crack cocaine, as well as committing crimes for the benefit of a criminal organization.