Pietro Scarcella

In the early 1970s, Scarcella worked at a parking lot in downtown Toronto where one of Toronto mob bosses, Paul Volpe's brothers used to park his car. This allowed him to establish a connection with Volpe, as Scarcella became his personal driver. In 1980, Scarcella was charged in connection with a commissions scam at a disposal company and was found guilty of writing phony invoices. In the early 1980s the Buffalo crime family also operated in Toronto and Hamilton, and hired former Satan's Choice MC hitman Cecil Kirby to kill Scarcella and Volpe in an arrangement with Remo Commisso of the Commisso family of Toronto to gain more control of the market. However, the plot was foiled when Kirby turned Royal Canadian Mounted Police informant. Scarcella moved up in Volpe's organization, having a hand in running the gambling and loan-sharking operations, while also working on schemes where they would be paid kickbacks from both the union and the developers for negotiating construction contracts. However, in 1983, Volpe was found dead in the trunk of his BMW at Pearson International Airport; Scarcella is said to be the last one to see Volpe alive before his unsolved murder.

After Volpe's death, Scarcella forged closer ties with the Montreal Mafia, the Rizzuto family, also Sicilian.

In the early to mid 2000s, hostilities developed between Scarcella and rival mob figure Michele Modica, who owed money to him and the Hells Angels. Another mobster, Salvatore Calautti ran up over $200,000 in gambling debts to the Rizzuto family and the Hells Angels, refusing to pay, and the debt was believed to be assumed by Modica. This led to the April 21, 2004 attempted assassination of Modica in a North York California Sandwiches shop, leaving an innocent victim, mother of three children, Louise Russo paralyzed while Modica and his associates escaped unscathed. Scarcella's nephew Antonio Borrelli had sprayed bullets with an AR-15 assault rifle from a van including Hells Angels bikers Paris Christoforou and Mark Peretz as the driver. Modica was later deported to Sicily.

An associate of Scarcella's Raffaele Delle Donne, who had arranged the meeting to unsuspectingly double cross Modica under Scarcella's orders, was also in the shop at the time of the attempted hit. Delle Donne soon turned informant with the police to help put those involved in injuring an innocent bystander in jail. Delle Donne worked with police for 13 months wearing wiretaps, which sentenced Scarcella, Peretz and Christoforou to 11 years and the shooter Borrelli to 12 years in April 2006. During the 2006 sentencing, Russo was paid $2 million in restitution from the mobsters to cover costs of rehabilitation and increased living expenses.

On April 1, 2007, Scarcella was stabbed six times in the chest in Millhaven maximum security penitentiary, taken to Kingston General Hospital and returned to prison the following week, but kept away from other prisoners. He moved to Beaver Creek Institution in 2009. On 11 April 2012, Scarcella was released on a statutory release program.