‘A well-known secret’: inside Toronto’s violent tow truck wars

When Cameron moved his family to a suburb north of Toronto last year, neighbours told him it one of the safest streets in the area. The roads were lined with cream-brick houses and manicured lawns. In summer, kids played between driveways; in winter, they dug tunnels through snowbanks.

But any hope of a peaceful life on Allison Ann Way was shattered when a house across the street was shot at four times in five months. The most recent attack came in early February, as Cameron was leaving for work. Moments after his children had headed out for school, gunfire tore into the neighbour’s garage and a dark SUV sped off.

“Whoever was doing this was trying to send us a message, and they did,” Cameron said, peering out from his garage. “This street is now empty, like a ghost town.”

Police say that the daylight shooting was the latest in a string of violent incidents linked to Toronto’s towing industry, a sector which has long been dogged by allegations of links to organised crime and aggressive turf wars.

This year alone, nearly two dozen vehicles have been set ablaze in attacks on tow truck repair sites. Last June, Toronto police investigating a towing network known as “The Union” laid more than 100 charges, including drug trafficking, extortion and 52 counts of conspiracy to commit murder. In the municipality of Peel, north-west of Toronto, investigators seized more than $4m in assets, including bulletproof vests, 586 rounds of ammunition and 18 tow trucks.

A recent police corruption probe, Project South, has raised allegations of collusion between officers and organised crime figures linked to towing networks and drug trafficking. Investigators allege that serving officers leaked sensitive information to hitmen, and even assisted a plot to kill a corrections officer at a maximum-security jail.

The investigation also offered an explanation for the shooting on Allison Ann Way: court records show that a civilian charged in the probe, Elwyn Satanowsky, is accused of arranging shootings on the street and discharging a firearm recklessly.

Lead investigators have said that Satanowsky, who had ties to the towing industry, had obtained information from police officers to facilitate crimes.

Sonya Shikhman, Satanowsky’s lawyer, declined to comment when asked about the charges her client faces, or his affiliation to the towing sector. On 6 March, a judge denied Satanowsky bail. None of the charges have been tested in court.

Police said the house targeted in the Allison Ann Way attack was linked to Alexander Vinogradsky, a towing boss and alleged crime boss, who was shot dead in a North Toronto shopping plaza in 2024. Vinogradsky himself had been accused of ordering targeted assassinations of rivals.

The flurry of allegations have renewed scrutiny of the rules governing accident towing, which experts say make the business particularly appealing to organised crime: what begins as a race to crash scenes has evolved into a sprawling pipeline of inflated repair contracts, insurance claims and extortion, which fuels violence that stretches far beyond the roadside.

In much of the greater Toronto area, accident towing still operates on a “first on scene” basis; first access can generate thousands of dollars, fuelling fierce competition as rival organisations monitor emergency calls and dispatch “chasers” to collisions. Sometimes the race to an crash scene can cause secondary crashes, and fights at collision scenes are common.

Doug Murray, a veteran tow operator, said a single call can be worth upwards of $10,000 once storage, repair work and insurance claims are secured.

“The more money involved, the more aggressive the competition becomes,” he said. That aggression has taken the form of arson, assault and murder allegations.

Investigators also allege that unscrupulous towers have defrauded insurers by staging crashes in partnership with complicit auto-body shops. According to the insurer Aviva, the number of staged crashes in Canada rose by nearly 400% in 2025 compared with the previous year.

The initial tow is often the start of a chain of fees and kickbacks. An unwitting driver, still shaken from a crash, can be directed toward repair shops, car rental agencies, injury lawyers and even physiotherapists. Each recommendation can generate a lucrative referral fee for the operator, Murray said.

Ultimately, motorists absorb the costs through inflated insurance premiums.

Another company owner said that criminal groups operated with coordinated radio networks and ruthless internal hierarchies, outmatching legitimate providers.

“As long as ‘first on scene’ remains the system, the violence will persist,” said Murray.

Efforts to curb the violence have focused on reforming how towing jobs are assigned.

On Ontario’s major controlled-access highways, however, business operates differently. Under new legislation, the province contracts accredited providers dispatched through a vetted system, limiting competition at collision points.

Industry experts say that although these reforms have quelled the clashes on highways, the flare-ups have condensed to urban areas, where collision towing remains less regulated.

Gary Vandenheuvel, head of the Professional Towing and Recovery Association of Ontario, said the highway model demonstrates how tighter oversight can help reduce criminal infiltration.

“The current system clearly isn’t working. We need to make it safer for towers and members of the public,” he said.

Vandenheuvel described the majority of the city’s towers as legitimate, saying the violence was driven by a small number of “bad actors”.

Yvon Dandurand, a criminologist who specializes in international organised crime, said the dynamics observed in the greater Toronto area are “far from unique”, pointing to similar patterns in Melbourne, Johannesburg and Cape Town, where towing operators have been engulfed in shooting and intimidation campaigns.

In the United States, cities including Detroit, Miami and New York have seen comparable turf wars. In a 2021 case, three former New York City police officers pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from towers and using a database to lead businesses to crash victims.

But in Toronto, the consequences are not evenly distributed. Police and community advocates warn that young people are being ensnared into these networks.

Among those arrested in Project South were two individuals under 18, while on 24 March a 21-year-old was arrested in connection with a separate turf war after nearly 10 months on the run following a mass shooting at a pub. All 10 suspects were aged between 15 and 22.

For towing gangs, the roles of enforcers and “chasers” are often filled by teenagers serving at the lowest rung of the hierarchy.

Marcell Wilson, a former gang member and founder of the One by One Movement, an organisation which works directly to support young people affected by street violence, said young people are treated as expendable labour within organised crime groups – and that Project South reflected a broader “well-known secret”.

In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the Toronto police service said: “It’s always a concern for police when young people become involved in criminal activity.

“Organized crime groups often target young people because they are more vulnerable to manipulation, may be seeking money or belonging, and are sometimes perceived by offenders as less likely to attract the same level of scrutiny or consequences as adults.”

Wilson said the links between corruption, organised crime and youth violence have long been visible.

“Guns are not manufactured in the projects,” he said. “Follow the chain – how does it get there?”