Pubdate: Sun, 13 Jul 2008
Source: Mississauga News (CN ON)
Copyright: The Mississauga News 2008
Contact:  http://www.mississauganews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/268

POLICE INFORMANT IN WITNESS PROTECTION

Torstar Network

Jorge Acosta knew his life would change forever once he agreed to 
play ball with police and prosecutors by testifying at a high stakes 
Mississauga murder trial. Acosta, 31, who is now in the witness 
protection program with his family, had been given immunity despite 
playing key roles in three contract murders,  including the killings 
of a father and son who drug investigators believed were linked to a 
Colombian drug cartel and a Mexican crime group.

Using his testimony, Peel prosecutors Steve Sherriff and Mike Morris 
last week convinced a jury to convict three men of first-degree 
murder in the July 26, 2005, slaying of Mississauga's Mauricio 
Castro, a major Canadian cocaine dealer.

"I don't think Acosta will ever be able to re-enter his life as it 
once was. He's always going to have to be protected by our government 
and relocated, probably out of the country," said Peel Const. Sean 
Gormley at the Brampton trial's preliminary hearing in April 2007. 
"He has no friends here."

Before he was murdered, Castro, a man with a family home in Bolton 
and a condo in Mississauga, imported millions of dollars of cocaine 
from Colombia through Mexico into Canada and the United States with 
his 71-year-old father, Humberto, drug investigators say.

Jurors found Michael Allen, 36, a career criminal from Mississauga 
and London, pumped four bullets into Castro, 31, who was in his Ford 
Escape outside of a Burger King at Square One Shopping Centre in 
Mississauga. Four days after the noon-hour killing, Castro's father 
was slain outside of his home in Pereira, Colombia.

The murders were part of a "corporate takeover," Sherriff told the 
preliminary hearing.

Jurors decided Jaime Restrepo, 34, the boss of Acosta's former GTA 
crime organization, ordered the hit on Castro - his own cousin - and 
paid Allen two kilos of cocaine worth more than $50,000 to carry it 
out. Zacky Deleon, 34, of Barrie, another drug runner for Restrepo, 
delivered the cocaine payment to Allen and was also found guilty.

Throughout the trial, jurors got an insight into international drug 
trafficking, a world of betrayal and double cross, a world where 
professional killers could be hired in South America and Canada for 
two kilos of cocaine.

They never knew U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers 
believed the Castros were linked to the notorious and violent 
Medellin Cartel, or the deep security and safety fears surrounding 
this trial. Police officers checked everyone entering the courtroom 
each day and undercover officers watched over Crown witnesses, most 
of whom, unbeknownst to jurors, received some protection.

Castro was considered a main supplier of cocaine in Canada and the 
pipeline for the illicit narcotic into New York. The DEA not only had 
an active investigation underway into his activities but a grand jury 
had been convened. The Castros would have been arrested had they ever 
set foot in New York.

After Castro was killed, Peel police found $750,000 in Canadian and 
U.S. currency in his Mississauga apartment. They also found four 
semi-automatic handguns, an Uzi submachine gun, and money counting machines.

"It was the kind of weaponry not normally found in society," Gormley 
told a preliminary hearing.

It was the Crown's case that Restrepo, with ties to Colombia and 
Costa Rica, had his cousin murdered to avoid having to repay a $1 
million debt that occurred when U.S. Customs seized $2.4 million at 
the Detroit/Windsor border on Aug. 18, 2004. The money, from the sale 
of 200 kilos of cocaine, was being transported in a truck as part of 
a regular drug-money haul from Hamilton to the U.S. and eventually to Colombia.

Restrepo was in charge of the cash, hidden in boxes inside the truck. 
He was on the hook for the lost money. Castro had to be repaid. 
Payments would be made in installments, cutting into his profits as a 
middleman in Castro's organization.

His crew also had about $400,000 of Castro's cocaine hidden in an 
apartment near High Park. Restrepo was selling the cocaine despite 
strict orders from Castro to wait until the price rose.

Getting rid of the Castros not only ended Restrepo's debt but also 
paved the way for him to run his own lucrative cocaine importing and 
distribution business as the top dog, not as Castro's middleman, 
Sherriff told jurors.

Even though Acosta and his family went into witness protection in 
February 2006, he knew he would be "looking over his shoulders" the 
rest of his life, Gormley told the preliminary hearing.

Acosta thought Restrepo wanted him dead. In fact, several people 
likely wanted him silenced. Not only did he testify against the 
accused men, he also helped plan Castro's murder in Canada and the 
murder of Castro's father in Colombia.

Acosta also named the hit men he hired in Colombia for $15,000 to 
have Humberto Castro murdered, identified as Posillo and El Negro, 
apparently men who once served as bodyguards for Fabio Ochoa, a 
well-known Colombian drug lord now in a U.S. prison.

He testified at the preliminary hearing via video from an unknown 
location because Peel police had credible information that a contract 
had been placed to have him killed before he testified, either en 
route to the courthouse, or inside.

When someone is arrested and co-operates, it is a major threat to a 
cartel, DEA Special Agent Joseph Dill told the preliminary hearing. 
He said cartels like to send messages so people "don't talk." The 
cartels had blown up planes carrying witnesses to trials, and 
kidnapped and killed family members to prevent informants from 
testifying against them, Dill said.

Although Acosta insisted Restrepo told him the Castros weren't 
connected to "the office" - a.k.a. "the cartel," which is why the hit 
men agreed to murder Humberto Castro - the DEA certainly believed 
they were part of the notorious Medellin drug organization.

The DEA believed Castro was moving hundreds of kilos of cocaine worth 
an estimated $2 million each month to Canada and New York via 
Colombia and Mexico. The Castros had become the main focus of a major 
DEA probe dubbed Project Mojo in February 2005 after 45 kilos of 
cocaine, headed for New York, was seized in Missouri.

Humberto Castro, according to the DEA, had once acted as an attorney 
for the late Pablo Escobar's infamous cartel.

Restrepo's younger brother Jorge, 31, also testified against his own 
brother and the others. He was also given immunity from prosecution 
for the murder. He lured Castro to the mall on the promise he was 
going to pay some of their debt. Instead of being tried for murder, 
he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and received a 
nine-year sentence in return for testifying as a Crown witness with 
an offer of witness protection when he leaves prison.

Initially a small-time cocaine dealer, Acosta began moving larger 
quantities of cocaine as one of several drug runners in Restrepo's 
crew. He delivered the drugs in suitcases to buyers waiting at subway 
stops after receiving special codes in his pagers.

Growing up in a rough neighbourhood in Medellin, Acosta said murder 
was a way of life where killers and legitimate businessmen lived side-by-side.

"In Colombia, everybody kills for peanuts," he said. "From my 
neighbourhood, some of them became lawyers, some engineers, some are 
just working men. Some are murderers. Some stick up banks, deal drugs .."

Using a childhood friend known only as Richard, he located the hit 
men for Humberto Castro's murder. Each was paid $15,000. Richard got 
a Renault 19 and $4,000 as a finder's fee. He never paid Richard up front.

"He knows me from the neighbourhood so if I don't pay, they'll just 
kill me and my whole family," he said.

Nobody connected with this trial is being prosecuted for any of the 
murders in Colombia.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart