Papalia crime family
| Founded | 1940s |
|---|---|
| Founders | Antonio Papalia |
| Founding location | Hamilton, Ontario |
| Years active | 1940s–present |
| Territory | Southern Ontario |
| Ethnicity | Italians as "made men" and other ethnicities as associates |
| Activities | Racketeering, loan sharking, money laundering, gambling, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud and prostitution |
| Allies | Buffalo crime family |
| Rivals | Musitano crime family and various gangs in Hamilton |
The Papalia crime family (Italian: [papaˈliːa]) is a 'Ndrangheta organized crime family based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Antonio Papalia founded the Papalia family in Canada in the 1940s, and is one of three centralized Mafia organizations in Hamilton, with the other two being the Musitano crime family and the Luppino crime family. The Papalias had strong connections with the Buffalo crime family of Buffalo, New York, under long-reigning boss Johnny Papalia, who was often called "Pops" or "The Enforcer". The killings of Johnny and his lieutenant Carmen Barillaro in 1997, ordered by the Musitanos, had effectively wiped out the family's remaining leaders in Canada. One news report stated that the events of 1997 "decapitated the Papalia family". One leader remained, Johnny's brother Frank, who died in 2014 and retired years before his death.